Background There is a growing interest in STEAM (STEM 1 the Arts) education as a means to enhance the creativity of STEM students and broaden interest in STEM fields. Many art educators, however, object to the instrumental justification for study in the arts as a way to improve student performance in other areas.Purpose Drawing on the first two authors' engagement in an interdisciplinary design studio, this study develops an expanded view of how STEAM might enrich engineering education in ways that more closely align with the pedagogical commitments of the arts.Design/Method This article is written as a collaborative autoethnography between the first two authors, educators in environmental engineering and art education, respectively. The study is grounded in the educational philosophy of arts advocate Maxine Greene, who views learning as an active, collaborative search for meaning, "wide-awakeness," and social change.Results Our dialogue reveals the potential for STEAM to provide students and educators with opportunities to explore personally relevant connections between materials, design, society, and the natural environment and to critically engage with implicit and explicit facets of disciplinary identity.
Conclusions This view of STEAM simultaneously complements and challenges currentconceptions of this emerging educational movement that, almost without exception, are underpinned by calls for competitive economic growth and technological development. We hope future research will build on our perspectives to continue a conversation about STEAM that considers the diverse contributions of, and mutual benefits to, all parties involved. It's 3.16 p.m. on a rainy Monday afternoon, and I feel uncomfortable. On my computer screen, I can see the homepage for the steam-notstem.com website, one of several "STEAM education" search results I have open in my web browser. To the right of the page are a series of rotating banners with statements about integrating the arts into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. "Creativity is economically viable," one of them says, followed by
Journal of Engineering EducationV C 2016 ASEE.
