Education Studies News and Events
Reviewing the Potential and Challenges of Developing STEAM education through Creative Pedagogies for 21st Century Learning
How can school curricula be broadened towards a more responsive, dynamic and inclusive form of education?
This project is part of a major initiative launched by the British Educational Research Association with the aim to identify and address issues of current importance to the study and practice of education. The Commissions’ findings will provide both theoretical rigour and an evidence base that can help set the strategic direction and aspirations of BERA and influence how it engages with other learned societies, Research Councils, Government and the education community more broadly.
Reviewing the potential and challenges of developing STEAM education…
The profound transformations affecting societies, the environment and knowledge systems as a whole, together with increasing complexity and uncertainty of current problems, are challenging conventional ideas of what counts as relevant scientific - and more broadly - disciplinary knowledge. The focus of the commission is to explore, analyze and collate new understandings of science, how these relate and interface with changes in education and how this might enrich current debates in education.
This one-year project will look at the innovative potential of introducing the Arts in the teaching of Science, Technology, and Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. The project is led by the University of Aberdeen (Dr. Laura Colucci-Gray and Dr. Donald Gray) in collaboration with a core team of colleagues from the University of Cambridge (Prof. Pam 
Burnard), University of Warwick (Ms. Jo Trowsdale) and University of Aberystwyth (Dr. Richard Davies).
A range of practitioners, professionals and researchers from across the arts, sciences, schools, industry are engaged in debate through a series of extended conversations. They are conducted against the backdrop of a literature review which identifies dominant themes to date in the educational research and identifies some newly emergent emphases which promise particular significance for future STEAM education practice and research.
Extended conversation 1 - Aberdeen (18th February 2016).
Extended conversation one, in Aberdeen primarily addressed the changing conceptualisation of science and arts, and the implications for science education (the commission’s first key question) from the perspective of the biological and environmental sciences. Contributions from Tim Ingold, Donald Gray, Sibel Erduran and Geraldine Mooney-Simmie. Provocations by Jan Van Boeckel. Facilitated by Laura Colucci-Gray.
Extended conversation 2 - Cambridge (15th April 2016)
Extended dialogue two, in Cambridge, focused on the relationship between formal school science as it is currently taught, and the differential (e.g. gendered) access to science knowledge affecting groups inside and outside schools (the commission’s second key question) – from the perspective of science, maths and technology. Contributions by Nick Corston, Rae Snape, Patricia Murphy, Liz Whitelegg, Cindy Forde, Kristof Fenyvesi ,Carrie-Ann Philbin, Yvette Solomon, Facilitation by Pam Burnard.
Accounts of both extended dialogues are available at www.steamresearch.wordpress.com
Extended conversation 3 -
Our third conversation, to explore how STEAM education is understood and how such practice happens in rural contexts such is taking place on line in Wales. Facilitated by Richard Davies.
Extended conversation 4 - Warwick (14th July)
The fourth extended conversation at Warwick will focus upon the potential of arts-based, creative pedagogies to foster inclusive, participatory and interdisciplinary learning in science and engineering (the commissions third key question) and the role of external partnerships. The event will involve schools, industry and community and features the European CREATIONS project, Lindsay Hetherington and Charlotte Slade, University of Exeter, The Imagineerium, Jane Hytch and Jo Trowsdale, Universities of Warwick and Coventry partners and the GetWet project, Pat Thomson and Andy Townsend, University of Nottingham. Facilitated by Jo Trowsdale.
Developments will be presented at the BERA Annual Conference to be held in Leeds in 2016 https://www.bera.ac.uk/beraconference-2016 and a final report will be published through BERA in November 2016.