Nicki Sochacka

Steam as Social Practice: Cultivating Creativity in Transdisciplinary Spaces.

12 In the wake of the economic recession and increasing competition from developing economies, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has emerged as a national priority. To art educators, however, the pervasiveness and apparent exclusivity of STEM can be viewed as another instance of art education being relegated to the margins of curriculum (Greene, 1995). Taking a different perspective, we find it helpful to look past STEM as a vehicle for promoting economic growth and international competitiveness and view it as a means toward overcoming the compartmentalized disciplinary approach to education (Holley, 2009). Considered in this way, STEM is about collaboration. In an educational setting, this means taking subjects that have previously been taught in isolation and weaving them into an integrated curriculum—a transdisciplinary endeavor that has the potential to lead to exciting and unexpected outcomes that can transcend the traditional goals of disciplinary education to address questions of social practice. Recently there have been calls to expand STEM education to include the arts and design, transforming STEM into STEAM in the K-20 classroom (Maeda, 2013). Like STEM, STEAM education stresses making connections between disciplines that were previously perceived as disparate. This has been conceptualized in different ways, such as: focusing on the creative design process that is fundamental to engineering and art (Bequette & Bequette, 2012); emphasizing the role of creative and synthetic thinking to enhance student interest and learning in science and mathematics; and showing the value in exploring the science and mathematics that underpin different artistic techniques (Wynn & Harris, 2012). In this article, we describe how a collaboration between art education, engineering, and landscape architecture led us to conceptualize STEAM as a social practice that reflects concerns for community engagement and ecological sustainability. Figure 1. An engineering student explains how art offers a different modality of ‘doing’ in a Transdisciplinary Design Studio. OOur nation’s success depends on strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of discovery and innovation... And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today—especially in science, technology, engineering, and math [STEM].