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Science and Mathematics Education Commons™
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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education
Ocean Underwater Scene Dioramas Of First Graders With Submarine Porthole Views, Ksenia Zhbanova, Audrey C. Rule, Denise A. Tallakson
Ocean Underwater Scene Dioramas Of First Graders With Submarine Porthole Views, Ksenia Zhbanova, Audrey C. Rule, Denise A. Tallakson
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
Ecology education of the younger generations is vital for worldwide change of people’s attitudes toward nature warranted by the current global ecological crisis. Yet, this goal needs to be addressed through age-appropriate activities that are educational and engaging. This practical article focuses on dioramas of ocean reef life made by first graders. This arts-integrated project served two main purposes: 1) education of primary students about ocean ecology and helping students realize their roles in saving nature 2) increasing student science content knowledge. Additionally, several other benefits of making dioramas emerged during this project, including highly creative student products, genuine interest …
Editorial: Developing Creativity Through Stem Subjects Integrated With The Arts, Ksenia Zhbanova
Editorial: Developing Creativity Through Stem Subjects Integrated With The Arts, Ksenia Zhbanova
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This issue of the Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions is focused on creativity - one of the most highly-desirable 21st Century skills on personal and global levels. Time, pedagogical knowledge, and resource constraints limit the number of opportunities for teachers to develop creativity in students. In this editorial, creativity development steps and strategies are illuminated along with specific roles of STEM subjects and the arts in development of student creativity. The processes of creativity development used in STEM and the arts are compared to each other and to the non-subject-specific creative process model of Root-Bernstein and Root- …
Science Through Art: Motivating Gifted And Talented Students, Ksenia Zhbanova
Science Through Art: Motivating Gifted And Talented Students, Ksenia Zhbanova
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
Gifted and talented students have unique characteristics and needs. Arts Integration is an effective differentiation strategy that helps meeting these students’ needs. STEM subjects are easily and organically integrated with the Arts because scientific and artistic inquiry are very similar. This practical article describes an arts-integrated project that provided the gifted and talented participants with an increased level of challenge, an opportunity for self-expression and for building social skills, amplified motivation, and a chance to deepen and demonstrate their knowledge of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, social studies and English Language Arts. In this project, identified gifted students completed figural transformations …
How The Arts Standards Support Stem Concepts: A Journey From Stem To Steam, Ksenia S. Zhbanova
How The Arts Standards Support Stem Concepts: A Journey From Stem To Steam, Ksenia S. Zhbanova
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This issue of the Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions is focused on the effects of integrating arts with STEM areas, an important and widely-considered topic in education today. This editorial provides an overview of the current state of the arts and STEM areas integration paradigm, an analysis of the benefits of the arts integration with the STEM subjects, and an overview of the history of the arts anchor standards. Comparison and connections between the National Arts Core anchor arts standards, the scientific method, engineering design process, and the 5E learning cycle are also illuminated. Summaries of the practical …
Art-Integration Through Making Dioramas Of Women Mathematicians’ Lives Enhances Creativity And Motivation, Audrey C. Rule, Dana L. Atwood-Blaine, Clayton M. Edwards, Mindy M. Gordon
Art-Integration Through Making Dioramas Of Women Mathematicians’ Lives Enhances Creativity And Motivation, Audrey C. Rule, Dana L. Atwood-Blaine, Clayton M. Edwards, Mindy M. Gordon
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
Creativity is essential for solving problems in the workplace, natural environment, and everyday life, necessitating that creativity be nurtured in schools. Identification of factors that intrinsically motivate students to learn difficult or initially unappealing content is also important. This project, in which 24 racially diverse fifth grade girls created dioramas of the lives of diverse successful women mathematicians, explored the girls’ reactions to art integration into mathematics through a phenomenological qualitative analysis of their products, essays, and responses to questionnaires. The project supported the Next Generation Science Standard for engineering design, Standard 3-5-ETS1-1 and two National Core Arts Standards for …
Three- And Four-Year Olds Learn About Gears Through Arts Incorporation, Dessy Stoycheva, Leann M. Perkins
Three- And Four-Year Olds Learn About Gears Through Arts Incorporation, Dessy Stoycheva, Leann M. Perkins
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This research paper explores art integration into a science lesson unit that follows the Next Generation Science Standards (K-PS2-1) and focuses on the effects on memory retention of key concepts along with levels of enjoyment. An experiment was conducted with children ages 3 and 4 teaching scientific concepts about gears while incorporating student-made art products. The children were assigned to alternating experimental (art-integrated) or control (no art) conditions during the four stages of the lesson. The results did not show statistically significant differences at the alpha = 0.05 level between conditions in the amount of information retained based on the …
Who Moved Those Rain Clouds To Town? Making Windbirds To Learn About The Power Of Wind, Deepanee Samarakoon, Latisha L. Smith
Who Moved Those Rain Clouds To Town? Making Windbirds To Learn About The Power Of Wind, Deepanee Samarakoon, Latisha L. Smith
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
In this practical article, a kindergarten teacher shares a lesson designed to teach students about the power of wind. To address the Next Generation Science Standards engineering standards, students discussed the negative and positive aspects of wind and made daily weather observations (K-ESS2-1). Students constructed bird-shaped windsocks, called windbirds, to explore how the shape of the object allowed it to move in the wind (K-2-ETS1-2). To address the National Core Arts Standards, creative arts were integrated as students designed cylindrical windbirds of colorful materials. The windbirds were used to observe the effects of wind in the students’ outdoor environment at …
Water Play, Jane E. Cline, Brandy A. Smith
Water Play, Jane E. Cline, Brandy A. Smith
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
The inclusion of activities to develop sensory awareness, spatial thinking, and physical dexterity, operationalized through hands-on science lessons such as water play, have long been part of early childhood education. This practical article addresses Next Generation Science Standards K-2 ETS1-3 and K-2 ETS1-2 by having four-year-old prekindergarten students direct the path of water on a vertical pegboard water table with strategically-placed, attached plastic cups with holes drilled into them that leak streams of water into each other. Students enhanced their retelling of the story of the Billy Goats Gruff by placing student-made watercolor artwork along the path of the water, …
Using Creativity From Art And Engineering To Engage Students In Science, Mason Albert Kuhn, Scott Greenhalgh, Mark Mcdermott
Using Creativity From Art And Engineering To Engage Students In Science, Mason Albert Kuhn, Scott Greenhalgh, Mark Mcdermott
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
STEAM education, referring to integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics, is a contemporary buzzword that is popular in many schools. In particular, many elementary school teachers who have been tasked to incorporate STEM teaching, because of the requirements of the Next Generation Science Standards, attempt to apply the arts in their science curriculum because they feel more comfortable using instructional approaches that incorporate creative activities such as crafts, drawing, and model construction than the core practices of STEM disciplines. Teachers can use the creative arts activities in two ways to enhance the STEM learning environment: 1) Using creative processes …
Spatial Thinking Skills And Stem Connections: How Does This Issue Address Them?, Audrey C. Rule
Spatial Thinking Skills And Stem Connections: How Does This Issue Address Them?, Audrey C. Rule
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
In this editorial, the Editor considered the importance of spatial thinking skills to STEM careers, provided examples of ways scientists use spatial thinking, noted sex and socioeconomic differences in spatial skill proficiency, and reviewed ways that activities included in articles in this issue involved spatial thinking. Brief summaries and preview images were provided for the articles in the issue. The four-component spatial thinking classification scheme with categories of intrinsic-static, intrinsic-dynamic, extrinsic-static and extrinsic dynamic was applied to the activities from this issue of the Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions. All categories of this classification scheme were addressed, providing …
Learning Form And Function By Dance-Dramatizing Cultural Legends To Drum Rhythms Wearing Student-Made Animal Masks, Phyllis Gray, Audrey C. Rule, Gloria Kirkland Holmes, Stephanie R. Logan, Andrea L. Alert, Cynthia A. Mason
Learning Form And Function By Dance-Dramatizing Cultural Legends To Drum Rhythms Wearing Student-Made Animal Masks, Phyllis Gray, Audrey C. Rule, Gloria Kirkland Holmes, Stephanie R. Logan, Andrea L. Alert, Cynthia A. Mason
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This study examined the self-efficacy in science, art, dance, and music; attitudes concerning contributions of people of various ethnic/cultural groups; and science learning of students involved in an after-school arts-integrated science enrichment project. Students dramatized three traditional animal legends from African, Native American, and Mexican cultures to drum beats while wearing student-made papier-mâché helmet crest masks of the animal characters. They learned the structure and functions of the featured animals through slide shows, embedded explanations in the play scripts, and hands-on form and function analogy materials that related the form and function of animal body parts to manufactured items. Although …
Third Graders Explore Sound Concepts Through Online Research Compared To Making Musical Instruments, Kyrie D. Borsay, Page Foss
Third Graders Explore Sound Concepts Through Online Research Compared To Making Musical Instruments, Kyrie D. Borsay, Page Foss
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This study is an exploration of several lessons on sound taught to third grade students using one of the Next Generation Science Standards (3-5-ETS1) and arts integration. A counterbalanced, pretest- posttest- distal posttest design experiment was conducted to compare student knowledge and attitudes between the control and experimental conditions. Control activities included learning about either stringed or percussion instruments (whichever not addressed in the experimental condition) through online searches for information and writing a factual paragraph; experimental activities included creating a percussion or stringed instrument using classroom art materials purchased with an imaginary budget. One group experienced the experimental condition …
Shadow Puppet Plays In Elementary Science Methods Class Help Preservice Teachers Learn About Minority Scientists, Phyllis Gray, Audrey C. Rule, Anneliese Gentzsch, Denise Tallakson
Shadow Puppet Plays In Elementary Science Methods Class Help Preservice Teachers Learn About Minority Scientists, Phyllis Gray, Audrey C. Rule, Anneliese Gentzsch, Denise Tallakson
Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions
This practical article describes an arts-integrated project with engineering design and science concepts from the Next Generation Science Standards, art principles from the National Arts Standards, as well as ideas under the theme of “Culture” from the National Council for the Social Studies Standards. Preservice teachers in an undergraduate science methods class researched the background, life, and accomplishments of a minority scientist by reading books and articles about the person. They created a script to present the experiences and contributions of the scientist to other preservice teachers and, eventually, elementary students. Shadow puppets were constructed out of cardboard to portray …