Did you already know about this classroom approach that offers far more than tests?
By Renata Neves
Source: Casa Hacker archive
STEAM education is an interdisciplinary teaching approach whose aim is to prepare our young people and students for the future. In this sense, the benefits of this kind of education can cross social barriers so that more peripheral communities take an active part in technological development.
This teaching model challenges the student. As a result, they go on to investigate and solve problems on their own.
The learning is also accompanied by a teacher whose role is to bring together the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), as well as to follow the student’s progress.
The aim is to make both education and the exact sciences more appealing. With that, the teacher teaches with more enthusiasm and the student comes to take an interest in subjects because they want to, and not because they are made to sit tests on them.
STEAM applies the following stages in its learning process: investigate, discover, connect, create and reflect, allowing these to be repeated as many times as the student finds necessary.
The process is deliberately similar to advanced research and innovation methods, forging a bond with young minds from an early stage.
With practice and content intertwined, the approach comes closer to reality and thereby heads off questions about the usefulness of knowledge. In other words, children stop asking “when am I ever going to use this?”.
And, above all, STEAM emerged because the technology sector is demanding qualified professionals. We need to talk now about the real impact of the approach in the peripheries. Shall we?
A little more about STEAM Education
United States, 1990. The proposal emerges for the STEM methodology (without the “A”).
The core idea was to unite science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an educational approach that would be relevant to students. Only in the last ten years was the letter A added to the acronym, representing Language, Humanities and Art.
Even so, the objective remained, and it gradually gained ground among schools, NGOs and other institutions.
Teachers using the methodology soon began to notice the advantages, because their students developed new skills, such as the growth of critical thinking. In addition, student participation became more active as classes went on.
STEAM Education clearly benefited creativity, social awareness and creation for the real world. In this sense, students became more attentive to innovating in line with the needs of their own realities.
Finally, there were clear benefits in terms of responsibility for the future. In this way, the teaching method improved students’ perception of the careers and challenges they will one day face. Today, STEAM teaching is being explored and all these advantages are being studied.
The good news is that the impact of this education is not being considered only for early years or primary education. Other levels, too, can benefit and prepare for our future.
Brazilian education vs the demands of companies
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was not satisfactory in 2018.
The low results in mathematics and science woke education up to children’s reality. Meanwhile, foreign literature was already discussing STEAM as a way out for innovating the basic education system.
In 2020, students grew more demotivated and disheartened with Brazilian education.
After all, the pandemic added to the difficulty of concentrating and the lack of face-to-face contact. Moreover, young people felt let down by the government, disapproving of the Ministry of Education’s performance.
The labour market, however, does not stop. Young people need to keep up with employment expectations for the coming years and prepare for companies’ new needs.
The Future of Jobs
“The Future of Jobs 2020” is a study by the World Economic Forum and, among its objectives, it also reports on the needs of the labour market.
In short, companies are increasingly automating and digitalising roles. While some of them plan to integrate with technology, others will invest in specialised hires, but the majority want to reduce their workforce.
There are also plans for upskilling and reskilling employees. There is less concern about adapting to new opportunities in Industry 4.0 technology sectors.
In this sense, unqualified professionals are set to lose even more ground in the market.
The study reports that those most negatively affected by COVID-19, mainly because of inequality, are the ones who will face the disadvantages.
According to the CEO of Cousera, Jeff Maggioncalda, “the pandemic has disproportionately affected millions of low-skilled workers” and “the recovery must include a coordinated reskilling effort on the part of institutions to provide accessible, job-relevant learning that individuals can access from anywhere in order to return to the labour market.”
In this context, it is clear that the STEAM Education approach is one of the best solutions to fill this gap and develop our young people for a better future.
But how?
What is the power of STEAM in the periphery?
It is worth beginning by highlighting the approach’s positive points for our education.
In general, STEAM helps form creative and critical minds. Through this teaching, students are able to visualise theoretical concepts more clearly.
This point also matters for public schools that are short of teachers. Sometimes, many students go months without decent contact with the compulsory classroom content.
As a result, difficult subjects fail to allow for each person’s learning pace and become the terror of young people. Here is where a loss of interest in knowledge begins, followed by discouragement and dropping out.
Inep’s statistics show that in 2021 the dropout rate among students in the public system was 5.6%.
Another advantage for public education students is the broadening of the curriculum. In this way, the labour market can offer more opportunities than frustrations.
Even so, broadening the curriculum is far more positive than it may seem, especially when we think of communities excluded from progress purely for lack of basic knowledge.
Furthermore, when students from the periphery are challenged to think and solve problems, they develop skills to innovate within their own realities. Casa Hacker’s project Minas em Tech is solid evidence of this process of growth.
Innovation becomes a precious ally for improving living conditions or expectations for the future. In this way, young people come to understand that technology should have no favourites — not by gender, nor by class, and much less by age.
Bringing STEAM Education together with Brazil
Despite STEAM’s clear advantages, the implementation of the approach in Brazil is still an infant in the making.
Moreover, the subject is not even known to most teachers. And those who do know it either cannot apply it in practice or prefer not to move away from the traditional model.
In both cases, deep-rooted education is one of the main reasons for the difficulty of implementation. That is why STEAM needs teachers who come together and management that encourages change in the classroom.
It is important to remember that the approach is not limited to primary or secondary education. In this way, teachers at higher, technical and other levels could find opportunities to innovate and engage their students.
Once again, limited thinking and traditionalism prevent even a trial in the classroom.
Another major obstacle to STEAM Education becoming a priority is the lack of professionals qualified in the subject. Often, interested teachers do not even have time to develop their skills outside their classes.
In addition, teachers in the periphery or in lower-income communities generally have to sustain a routine of teaching across several schools. In such cases, when is there time left over to learn about an almost unknown approach?
Nevertheless, interested people can transform the lives of young people and adults. Better still, they can contribute to a labour market with far more to offer than to frighten.
Technology will still open many doors in the future, but we cannot allow only a few to reach them.
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You have read an article by Casa Hacker, a non-profit initiative dedicated to fighting social inequality through technological education.
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Referências
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WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM. The Future of Jobs Report 2020. Disponível em: .
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INEP. Programa Internacional de Avaliação de Estudantes (PISA) 2018 – Relatório Brasil. Disponível em: .