It is very important to engage students more in STEAM as they are critically important for our society. By showing them how these topics are present in every aspects of life, and has been since the dawn of civilisation, and by using cross-curricular teaching methods, we will boost the pupils’ interest in the inner workings of the world.
Especially, we need to encourage categories of pupils such as young girls or pupils with Specific Learning Disorders, as they are more likely to be discouraged from pursuing a scientific or mathematics-oriented career. To do boost STEAM education we intend to adopt a cross-curricular approach by using History to contextualise STEAM and allow for a non-formal, hands-on active learning.
This project will be an open door to other cultures as well as a strong motivator to explore other countries’ heritage, but also STEAM and cross-curricular information.
The concrete intellectual outputs of the projects will be as follows:
- A Pedagogical guide, designed to help teachers to adopt a cross-curricular approach and link the STEAM curriculum with Sciences and Mathematics applications and principles in History.
- A booklet on formal and non-formal approach which will concentrate on explaining how to unite formal and non-formal approach to STEAM.
- 35 manipulations and their Blueprints which would gather 35 sheets containing plans, graphic representations of manipulations to reproduce, scale models or building blocks of activities to be reproduced by teachers.
- The pedagogical sequences/ Workshops which would come in the form of pedagogical sequences detailing the outline of a lesson and the activities realised in it, some of them using the props and materials created in the 35 manipulations sheets.
- A Good practices and implementation booklet, which would be a compendium of testimonials and feedback following a test phase of all the other intellectual productions of the project that would summarize what to do and what not to do in this field, as has been tested by peers and colleagues.