Art Education Commons^™

Engaging Many Minds: Nurturing Collaboration In A Steam Context, Mark Dzula

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This field note describes a recent interdisciplinary project facilitated by Jeremy Gercke, an art teacher at the Bishop's School in La Jolla, California. The project creates ceramic tile markers for flora around the Bishop's School campus. The markers feature QR codes linking to websites populated with student content, including: drawings, information, and oral histories. In this project, Mr. Gercke synthesizes his interests as an artist; maximizes his social connections to mentors, peers and students; and bridges disciplines to create opportunities for interdisciplinary (STEAM) inquiry.

Ecoscience + Art Initiative: Designing A New Paradigm For College Education, Scholarship, And Service, Changwoo Ahn

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The paper presents a new initiative, EcoScience + Art, which blooms at George Mason University. The creator explains the background, history, and recent activities of the initiative, and also introduces an on-going special project called “The Rain Project”, a student participatory project to design, construct, and monitor a green infrastructure (i.e., floating wetland) for sustainable stormwater management on campus. The special project is geared to design and present a new paradigm to integrate college education, scholarship, and service. The relevance of the initiative and the special project to STEAM education is discussed.

Putting The Team In Steam: The Art Of Robot Making, Teresa Walker, David Thompson

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

What began as a life partnership has evolved into an early learning STEAM team. Artist, David Thompson, uses science, technology, engineering and math, on a daily basis, to create robots and much more. Teresa Day Walker is an assistant professor of early childhood education. Through necessity they discovered their combined talents could be used to promote STEAM in early childhood. David and Teri teamed up to provide a nearly impromptu robot making demonstration for 100 kindergarten students. After reading their co-authored book, Robot Hide and Seek, both, clay based and 3-D modeled images were used to generate interest and …

Designing For Immersive Technology: Integrating Art And Stem Learning, Jane Crayton, Vanessa Svihla

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Students struggle to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics concepts. The arts have been proposed as a means to engage students in STEM education, resulting in the idea of STEAM. This study investigates how two students in a six-week summer program solved technological and design production problems to create public service announcements for the immersive fulldome on the topic of water conservation. Qualitative data were collected, including interviews, observations, artifacts of student work and reflections. Qualitative analysis focused on integration of STEM content and practices with the arts. The study contributes to what is known about how people learn when …

Pigs Feet, Jesse W. Standlea

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

My sculpture “Pigs Feet” has literal foundations upon casts of live pig’s feet. I locally sourced the pig’s feet before casting them. My sculpture makes use of a once cutting edge casting technology, alginate. Alginate molds were once the standard in dentistry. Alginate is an appealing casting material as it is refined from brown seaweeds, is both food and skin safe, it is suitable for educators, for artists and engineers alike.

Theatre As Education: Creating And Performing A Play With Elementary School Students, Sarah C. Lopez

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is an exploration of the concept of theatre as education and what I learned about teaching, transformation, and failure through my thesis project. In order to explore these ideas, I reflect on my experience creating and performing a short play with a group of eight 2^nd and 3^rd grade students over the span of nine weeks. I pinpoint the parts of the process that worked well and discuss how these techniques and activities could be used to enhance curriculum and learning in the classroom. I also discuss which parts of the process failed and what I …

Labor, Vera Bauluz

CGU MFA Theses

I make sacred objects from scratch, from ready mades, from industrial materials, and sometimes from trash or recycling. I treat those objects with love and reverence to embed them with essence and soul. I propose conversations with objects exquisitely executed, that question our social order and the machine, easily understood by everybody, although still challenging our understanding of contemporary art.

The placement of the work and the lighting, as fundamental part of the installation, attempts to generate strokes of conscience that enhance human understanding and capabilities beyond a specific discourse.

Humor and sacred coexist in my installation and in my …

K-12 Students See Steam Everyday, Meghan Reilly Michaud

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Today’s students exist in a visual world. A new semiotic language has emerged in the digital age. It consists of an ever-evolving vocabulary of signs and symbols that one can rapidly decipher. Icons represent applications and functions on a plethora of modern devices. Sounds indicate changes and the start and end of activity. The exposure of new audio and visual media are part of everyday communication, now more than ever. The Arts teach our students to better perceive these cues and the information that they deliver.

Cultivating High-Level Organizational Engagement To Promote Novel Learning Experiences In Steam, Chad Mote, Karen Strelecki, Kate Johnson

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Traditional partnerships in K-12 public education often produce low-level organizational engagement among its partners—one partner funds, the other uses the funds Typically a “partner in education” donates funds, which may benefit students through the purchase of new equipment, staff development experiences, or scholarships. In some cases, an organization may send an expert over to speak with the students about their field. This type of philanthropic outreach is indispensable for schools that need additional support and important for students to gain information from the “real world” but does not necessarily translate into deep, meaningful academic impact.

The Efficacy Of Mathematics Education, Eric Geimer

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Evidence supports the notion that mathematics education in the United States is inadequate. There is also evidence that mathematics education deficiencies extend internationally. The worldwide mathematics education deficit appears large enough that improving student performance in this educational problem area could yield great economic benefit. To improve the efficacy of mathematics education, education’s root problems must first be understood. Often supposed educational root problems are considered and contrasted against potential deficiencies of mathematics methodologies and curricula that are based on mainstream educational philosophies. The educational philosophies utilized to form early-grade mathematics methodologies and related curricula are judged to be the …

A Reflection: Art And Science In A Museum Gallery, Kaileena Flores-Emnace

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Art education in a public space can be a venue for the blending of art and science. As a Contemporary Art Start educator for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, I have experienced the many ways in which transdisciplinary education creates deeper student understanding and engagement. At MOCA we use Visual Thinking Strategies for student tours, a research-based teaching method that invites students to direct gallery discussions. We visit a few artworks for ten to fifteen minutes each to foster critical thinking and encourage students to bring personal knowledge and experience to the conversation.

Full Steam Ahead – A Collaborative Colloquium, Hilary Dito

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

On February 2, 2012, Contra Costa County Office of Education organized its 2^nd Annual STEAM Colloquium: Full STEAM Ahead. This forum brought together over 150 educators, business leaders and community members to discuss and share best practices in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education

Steam With A Capital A: Learning Frenzy, David Rufo

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A student dipped a brush into a bowl of viscous tempera paint and in a few quick strokes formed thick magenta letters on a large display board. Nearby a handful of students were working together to attach string to paper cups and balloons. Across the room a small group of girls were lying on the floor carefully adding multi-colored text to a poster. Two others created characters out of Popsicle sticks for a puppet show...This is how the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math (S.T.E.A.M.) happened with the fourth and fifth graders during the first few weeks of …

Keeping Abreast With Liberal Arts And Science Through Steam, Tanya Rivas, Gregory Knotts

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The integrated unit on breast cancer described here includes biological science and visual art standards and was targeted at high school juniors and seniors. The goal was to make a potentially controversial and taboo subject relatable through an art-science approach

Reflections ~ How Stem Becomes Steam, Ruth Catchen

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Reflections from designing a STEAM class for high-risk students.

Broad Vision: The Art & Science Of Looking, Heather Barnett, John R. A. Smith

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Undergraduate students and academic staff from diverse disciplines in the arts and sciences investigated questions of mediated vision through a year-long interdisciplinary research project at the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. The Broad Vision project explored the perception and interpretation of microscopic worlds, and investigated the benefits and challenges of working across disciplinary divides in a university setting. This article describes the three-phase model for interdisciplinary learning and research developed through the project, providing a valuable case study for inquiry based art/science education.

Merging Science And Art: The Bigger Picture, Natasha Hall

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

It has been stated that artists comprehend and chronicle the completeness of the visible world (Wallach & Bret, 1987), defining Art as the creative expression of knowledge about the visual world. But to what extent does that awareness extend into a scientific appreciation of the world? The acronym STEAM is an abbreviation of Science, Technology, Electronics, Arts and Mathematics. Weaving interactions between Science and Art, have been shown by Clarke and Button (Clarke & Button, 2011), to intensify interconnections between nature, with Landscape, and ultimately with sustainability.

Getting Real About The E In Steam, James Catterall

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

STEM and STEAM are in the news. Researchers and educators in my field (cognition, art, and creativity) argue reasons for adding the A to STEM. While I visit this below, my focus is elsewhere. In this brief essay, I want to explore the meaning and importance of the E appearing in both STEM and STEAM. What’s engineering doing in this mix? And what are some reasons for affirming the arts when the role of engineering is clarified?

Creative Writing Thesis: Poetry, Desmond Bonhomme

CMC Senior Theses

The title of this compilation of my own creative writings is Trees, Breathe, Paper. This unique collection of poetry, short stories and prose contains a range of work, composed from 2002-2012. The thematic goal of this undertaking is to ballast as many implicit and explicit meanings as are comprehensible, and to extrapolate a distinct spectrum of latent and straightforward explanations with discernible psycho-analytical accuracy. We all know poetry is truly formless and based on springs of natural inspiration. Thus, we derive our purest inspiration from the natural world and we prune it in its unfiltered, raw state. Poetry is an …

Dangerous 'Preservation' In Malaysia, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

A recent article appeared in a daily newspaper of Kuala Lumpur reports on alarming preservation measure that the Muzium Negara intends to implement at the Gua Tambun rock art site. They must be halted immediately if the rock paintings are to remain in a pristine state.