STEAMing Ahead: Moving the STEAM Approach forward through teacher-led cooperation

One reason we apply for the project is to develop our organisations and the capacities of staff. In the three schools, STEM is already recognised as having had a significant role in educational development in recent years, and the Partners are convinced that STEAM is inevitably going to be a part of educational development in the years to come, accelerating its influence on public policy. Most schools are going to need to work in a STEAM environment, but many have not fully thought through how Art can be used to add an extra dimension to the idea of STEM to make it far more significant.

The main goals of the project were: 1. Promoting interest and excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the STEAM approach in schools 2. Development of key competencies in school students 3. Supporting teachers, school leaders and other teaching professions. In combining and addressing these priorities, the objective of ‘STEAMing Ahead’ is for the development of a broad yet detailed set of pedagogical, educational and research-based resources resulting from an in-depth implementation of a STEAM approach.

We identify the implementation activities in five sets: Management, Transnational Meetings, and a Learning Teaching Activity, which set the foundations for Result Production, and the Multiplier Events at the project’s conclusion. During the implementation of the project, we managed to implement every activity that was originally planned. The Learning and Teaching Training Activity played a direct role in implementing Partner development so that school teachers working directly with students could incorporate their knowledge about implementing the STEAM approach in a structured way, explicitly referring to the Proportion Áurea as a thematic area. The activity's objective was to ensure that teachers were left stimulated by the topic of the teaching subject and had a good understanding of the pedagogical strategy the project had established over the previous months.

In terms of project results, the partnership produced everything it planned: 1. ‘Strategies, Methodologies and Analysis: preparing teachers to apply a STEAM approach through the application of the Golden Ratio’. 2. ‘Curricula, Resources and Assessments: collating materials for the implementation of the STEAM approach in the classroom’. 3. ‘Courses, Modules and Peer–Learning Activities: Implementations in the classroom and virtually with cooperation across national borders’. 4. ‘Guidelines, Publications and Recommendations: Publishing and presenting outcomes based on observations & evidence to share and promote the STEAM approach’. This covers a set of best practice guidelines appropriate for teachers to think about their own implementation of STEAM as part of the reporting on the implementation of the curriculum in the classroom when applying cooperation, collaboration and peer-learning. 5. 'Scientific Academic Book' with contributes from teachers involved in the project and also experts in the area.