Steam curriculum: Arts Education As An Integral Part Of Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Education 
The STEAM educational model is not a completely new concept as it is based on 
the idea of integration of subject matter and collaboration amongst educators. Berk 
(2016) considers “…interdisciplinary and hybrid interactions between diverse 
methodologies and skills” to be the solution to solving the complex challenges of today’s 
society (p. 16). Keane and Keane (2016) state that integrated arts education allows 
students an opportunity to learn and discover the world (p. 63). Guyotte, Kellam, 
Constantino, and Sochaka (2014) suggested that we should view STEAM as, “…a means 

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RUNNING HEAD: STEAM CURRICULUM PLAN 
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toward overcoming the compartmentalized disciplinary approach to education” (p. 12).
The Transdisciplinary Design Studio 
Authors Guyotte et al. (2014) discussed interdisciplinary thinking as a social 
practice and they described contemporary artists whose works explore themes that are 
transdisciplinary in order to illustrate how the arts are not disparate from the sciences (p. 
13). Likewise, they described how engineering could also be viewed as a social practice 
in which the goals revolve around “social and ecological justice” (Guyotte et al., 2014, p. 
13). With this concept, a Transdisciplinary Design studio was created for undergraduate 
and graduate students of art education, landscape architecture, and civil and 
environmental engineering programs (Guyotte et al., 2014, p. 14). These students were 
given two design challenges given the problem of sociotechnical complexities of waste 
and water sustainability and were expected to collaborate in order to create a presentation 
of their concepts and process of the solution to the problem (Guyotte et al., 2014, p. 15). 
The challenges that these students were given had motivated them to utilize creative 
thinking skills and arts-based inquiry methods such as, “…observing, recognizing 
patterns, empathizing, playing and synthesizing.” (Guyotte et al., 2014, p. 14-15). One of 
the engineering students reflected on the challenge as a beneficial experience because it 
“…helped her develop a deeper understanding- not only of other disciplines, but also of 
her own” (Guyotte et al., 2014, p. 17). The instructors saw the STEAM framework 
emerge throughout this process in three stages, consisting of: “Thinking Through 
Materials, Considering Audience, and Engaging with Community” (Guyotte et al., 2014, 
p. 17).