Tracie Costantino

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].

Social Issues in Art and Visual/Material Culture Education

The roots of social issues in art and visual/material culture research and practice run historically deep.1 Educators such as John Dewey, Vincent Lanier, June King McFee, Graeme Chalmers, Eugene Grigsby, Laura Chapman, Rogena Degge, Ron Neperud, Kenneth Marantz, Jerry Hausman, Edmund Feldman, and others have explored art in relation to culture; popular, everyday, and community art; class and race; and Freire’s theory of conscientization. Well-developed contemporary education discourses, such as social justice, social reconstruction,2 critical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, and liberatory pedagogy have also influenced art/visual/material culture education research. These pedagogies share premises that teachers serve as guides, not authorities, to their students and that education exists in a politicized sphere, and must be relevant to students’ lives. It should help them develop critical, reflective thinking, guide them to participate in a democratic society and employ “the principles of justice, liberty, and equality” in their lives (Giroux, 1991, p. 245; Torres, 1998). A final influence on social issues in art/visual/material culture education is a trend among artists and writers over the last 25 years to address social issues in their work (e.g., Becker, 1994; Felshin, 1995; Gablik, 1991; Kester, 2004; Lacy, 1995; Raven, 1989). These authors argue for art as a communicative act that must take on relevant social tasks. As in much research in the arts, the character of research focusing on social issues in art/visual/material culture education is qualitative: ethnographic studies, case studies, action research, philosophical inquiry, and anecdotal accounts. Because this handbook emphasizes empirical research, but much of the research on social issues is philosophical and conceptual, the philosophical and conceptual issues serve as frames for the empirical research. We focus on research published between 1990 and 2005.

Seeing Experiences of Interdisciplinarity Through Student Artwork

This paper explores visual response methods as a representation of student learning in a college-level interdisciplinary curriculum integrating art and engineering. The visual response methods, specifically visual journals and postcards, are examples of authentic assessment and alternative data collection methods embedded in a mixed-methods (qualitative dominant) practitioner research case study. In the paper, we focus on different means for analyzing these visual responses (e.g., through hermeneutic analysis, document analysis, and narrative analysis) and deliberate the contribution of diverse analysis methods to the researchers’ understanding of students’ experiences of interdisciplinarity in this course.

Writing for Arts Education Policy Review

This article provides readers with suggestions as to how to prepare manuscripts for publication in Arts Education Policy Review. It is presented in a question-and-answer format and includes references to model policy articles.