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

Approaches to STEAM Curricula Design 
There is a variety of research on a STEAM interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary 
approach that examines the relationship between the arts and STEM content. According 
to Yakman (2008), “STEAM is a developing educational model of how the traditional 

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academic subjects (silos) of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics can 
be structured into a framework by which to plan integrative curricula” (p. 1). 
The 
objectives of STEAM are to reconstruct research policy, advocate integration of Art 
education in K-12, and to motivate employers to hire artists and designers to stimulate 
innovative thinking (
The Congressional STEAM Caucus, 2013
). The following journal 
articles investigate the application of this actively growing curriculum framework.
Mixed-Methods 
In a mixed-methods design approach, researchers examined STEAM integrated 
curriculum and pedagogy of pre-service elementary teachers using peer-evaluation 
surveys and open-ended interview questions. The quantitative data elicited from the 
surveys about STEAM lesson plans was intended to identify possible differences between 
pre-service elementary teachers that are bilingual generalist regular generalist, or an 
undecided generalist (Tillman, 2015, p. 314). In this study, bilingual generalists refers to 
those who intend to teach in Spanish and in English, regular generalists refers to the 
regular elementary education majors, and undecided generalist refers to those in an 
education program who have undecided tracks (Tillman, 2015, p. 303). Qualitative data 
was elicited from the teachers via interviews regarding their perspectives and attitudes 
about the curriculum.
The peer-evaluated surveys were formulated using a scale that evaluated seven 
objectives: “(1) Do the lessons creatively demonstrate innovative ways of teaching 
mathematics or science? (2) Is lesson content closely related to the lesson objectives in a 
creative manner? (3) Was there creativity used in developing an enjoyable learning 
environment? (4) Are there enough creative challenges presented for students? (5) Are 

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the arts components creatively integrated with the mathematics? (6) Do the lessons try to 
creatively create an equitable learning environment that respects all students’ ideas? (7) 
Are there enough choices for students to creatively choose their own ways to solve the 
problems?” (Tillman, 2015, p. 313). The open-ended interview questions asked the 
teachers to compare and contrast their lessons with the others’ lessons in terms of 
authentic creativity (Tillman, 2015, p. 313). Results show that all groups of teachers had 
the most success with, “including creative innovation and creative connection” and the 
least amount of success with, “including creative challenges and creative choices” 
(Tillman, 2015, p. 320). Overall, there were very few differences among the three sets of 
teachers who participated in the study (Tillman, 2015, p. 323).