STEAM teaching professional development works: effects on students’ creativity and motivation

Abstract

A promising way to bring STEAM (STEM enriched with Arts) into classrooms is the Professional Development (PD) path. Its main difference to a usual PD lies in the introduction of creativity with its social skills rather than just on cognitive learning, and thus in STEAM teaching, teachers need training in new ways of teaching. In order to establish STEAM in everyday school life, an effective PD is required to go beyond one-time interventions, which seldom work sustainably. After our course schedule, the participating teachers were supposed to apply their expertise in their next school year’s classroom. The provided material ensured the teachers to work regularly with STEAM, and as the involved teachers were supposed to recapitulate and consolidate their STEAM skills in their classroom work. Following the PD goals, the students (N = 550) of the participating teachers were monitored for scientific motivation and creativity in order to examine the PD effects. For the analysis, we calculated canonical correlations to confirm the association between creativity and motivation. The structural equation model (SEM) confirmed the model that with STEAM creativity has a positive effect on motivation: A long-term PD that is integrated into school life is an appropriate socio-cultural sustainability entry to promote creativity in classrooms. Through creativity, apparently, students’ self-efficacy increase. In conclusion, integrating creativity into education via PD works and may provide a promising channel to multiplication into further science classrooms, which is discussed in the conclusions.

STEM vs. STEAM Education and Student Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In turn, Oh et al (2013) [40], considering the STEAM approach as the fusion of various fields, designed a program based solely on scientific content. Conradty and Bogner (2020) [52] also reported something similar in their study, as its design was focused on science classes, although only one scientific topic was named: "particle physics".…”

“…Oh et al (2013) [40] Creativity of the person Torrance's TTCT Creativity Test Engelman et al (2017) [41] Creativity of the person Ad hoc questionnaire Creativity of the context Öztürk and Seçken (2017) [42] Creativity of the person Ad hoc questionnaire Creativity of the context Kakarndee et al (2018) [43] Creativity of the person Creative Thinking Ability Test (CTAT) (ad hoc) Sattar-Rasul et al (2018) [44] Creativity of the person Ad hoc questionnaire McKlin et al (2018) [45] Creativity of the person Ad hoc questionnaire Creativity of the context Ozkan and Topsakal (2019) [46] Creativity of the person Torrance Verbal and Figural Creative Thinking Test (TTCT) (Torrance 1966) [50] Creativity of the product Ad hoc Rubric Wannapiroon and Petsangsri (2020) [51] Creativity of the person Torrance Verbal and Figural Creative Thinking Test (TTCT) (Torrance 1966) [55] Conradty and Bogner (2020) [52] Creativity of the person; Creativity of the context CPAC questionnaire (Miller and Dumford 2016) [57] Genek and Küçük (2020) [53] Creativity of the person Turkish adaptation of Scientific Creativity Test SCT (Çeliker and Balım 2012) [58] If we compare the approach adopted in the didactic interventions with the perspectives toward the evaluation of creativity, we can see that the potential creativity of the learning environment is usually considered in the interventions based on the STEAM educational approach, as well as personal creativity, (see [41,45,52]). On the contrary, it only occurred in one of the seven interventions based on STEM education (see [42]).…”

“…Table 4 shows how the attention of the authors usually turns to the creative skills of the students (n = 13; 92.8%). Looking deeper at the different perspectives toward the evaluation of creativity, we found that Engelman et al (2017) [41], Öztürk and Seçken (2017) [42], McKlin et al (2018) [45] and Conradty and Bogner (2020) [52] all paid attention to both the creative potential of pupils and the environment/ learning context, while Altan and Tan (2020) [50] centered on analyzing the creativity evident in the product that the students had created.…”

“…However, the references upon which we relied in this review were too few and far between for us to certify with some rigor that the bonds of these educational approaches can promote the potential development of creativity within the student. Despite this lack of clarity, although the convenience of STEAM education, over and above STEM education, might appear clear, with a view to developing the creativity of students [5,52,56], it is an invalid argument.…”

“…[3]." (p. 1648)Conradty and Bogner (2020)[52] "The keyword "STEAM" refers to the integration of arts (A) and creativity in the classical STEM teaching (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). It is supposed to enrich science classrooms with creative interventions and by that way to counteract the low reputation of science teaching as abstract, difficult or even boring (Bennett & Hogarth, 2009; Henriksen, 2014)."…”