This part here is complex and it deserves its own guide (a work for later). 

As we said before, for the sake of explanation, we use mainly the term STEAM. But it doesn’t mean that STEAM and STEM are the same thing or have the same perspective. So, in this Guide, when we use STEM, it was not a typo. We really mean it, because probably we are contrasting points or telling something about the story of STEM education. The fact is, in the US, STEM tends to prevail as the dominant term. Recently, more and more STEM programs are switching to STEAM motivated by several reasons. 

 Anyway: STEM is born STEM and not STEAM. There are those who stick other letters in the middle. The fact is that the whole STEM movement in the USA generated a lot of repercussion regarding its inconsistencies as a promise to improve education or to be an interdisciplinary approach. After all, what is a curriculum where only the disciplines of direct economic return matter¹? And what is a proposal that is said to be interdisciplinary, but with only half of the disciplines. Do the natural sciences count more?

Then, in this story, those who still defended STEM began to show up, but including the A for arts. The idea was to represent the human sciences or to link the A for art to Design, which is commonly evoked in the STEM proposals. Somewhat to indicate that STEM without an A isn’t good enough^2,3. Now, if art really is there on its own or if the A means human sciences as well, it is another long and hot debate. 

It is not a term that brings multiple disciplines in its name to sounds easier. The idea is that they should be integrated with each other in teaching and learning. That is also why STEAM comes in the wake of curricula organized by competencies and skills, not by disciplines. This organization is not something brand new and has happened in the curriculum reforms in several countries over the last decades. Questions to think: what is interdisciplinarity? Does every STEAM program do this integration? How to do it effectively?

In the meantime when many educators realized that putting the letters together wouldn’t automatically transform the S+T+E+A+M in something genuinely integrated, some start adopting the term STEM integration¹. As an evolution of the concept. What we know so far, is that no matter how many letters and terms you add to the STEAM, but rather the way that knowledge is envisioned in the curriculum.

Looking not so much to the beginning, but to the last decade, what has happened globally is that many educational NGOs and Foundations have begun to incorporate STEAM into their projects, especially by using their increased influence in the policy-making¹. Many of them rely on PISA and the OECD line of argument² to build STEAM programs in other countries and practice advocacy at the political level to bring governments to invest in STEAM. Surprisingly or not, the majority of these foundations are backed by the respective technology multinationals from the US and Europe. If you look at every large company that has its foundation, whose business is education, there’s a great chance that you will find STEAM on their portfolio.

In Brazil the story goes like this:

STEAM was quite “unknown” 10 years ago, and more or less 5 years ago it began to gain notoriety through NGOs and elite private schools. But it was a pionerism, not something exactly popular. This happened at the same time when the Maker Movement and the FabLabs also began to appear in the educational media. Some companies also came up offering programming language courses to school children. And a number of EdTechs also appeared in Brazil, more or less at the same time, and some invested in products directly or indirectly related to STEAM¹. From there, of course, the STEAM ideas were also spread to the public schools, either by teachers’ own efforts or either by small initiatives from school administrators. 

To conclude, about 3 years ago, there was a significant move when the Ministry of Education in Brazil required the textbooks to include STEAM projects in the PNLD (National Textbook Programme). That is, it became a trend officially adopted by the government – without professional development or clear indications of how this could be implemented in the Brazilian schools and curriculum, of course…

As expected, what was a fever in the U.S. soon became an agenda in other countries as well. One factor that seems to have an influence on the strength and shape of STEAM in each country is the degree of industrialization and reliance on foreign technologies. That is, in countries whose tech industry is dominant, such as the U.S. and Great Britain, the STEM-crisis narrative has prevailed. In other words, reports and publications have built an influential narrative around an urgent need for STEM (STEM and not STEAM), otherwise the economy, job-sector, national security and the whole society would perish. Although the way we describe might sound a bit intense, it can be easily noted from these reports and the media around STEM¹.

 In countries such as Germany and France, the tone was more one of “scarcity” than “crisis. In emerging countries that consume more technology than they produce, such as Brazil and other Latin American countries, STEAM came later and was guided by mixed arguments. 

Here is where we can connect many points of this entire story. The academic literature or the narratives in the educational media leave no doubt: STEM was born in the USA in response to a rising demand from the market. To supply the workforce in these areas (STEM only), especially at a time when the giants of technology began to play a greater role in the economy more than any other sector. Hence, the story was built roughly on the mantra: we need more professionals in the STEM areas to save the economy¹. Note well, STEM and not STEAM.  This industry is not bothered to create jobs for artists or sociologists, right²?

And who came up with this STEM-thing, then? The market sectors. Not the school, nor the students, nor the teachers. Neither the government. And for what? To graduate professionals who could meet this demand. And it is here that whoever seeks to understand whether STEAM has technicist values of education, what’s the type of curriculum at stake or what values prevailed initially in STEM, will find a good answers. 

Can we say today that every STEM program everywhere maintains or follows this line? No, of course not. Can we say that the STEAM has to be like this? No. But understanding this origin is crucial. And it helps us to understand why it is not possible to reduce the STEAM to a simple methodology of teaching. There is a whole context in which STEAM was built, it didn’t surge in a vacuum of ideology, geopolitical issues, perspective of school and much more.

The estimation is that the US puts 3 billion dollars in STEM¹, considering only the federal investments. That’s without mention investments from companies, foundations and the states. STEM became the rule in any educational program. States and schools would simply not receive funding if they did not emphasize STEM in their educational policies². So, as some authors point out, it became an obsession in the US³.

Whether motivated by advances in educational research or by market pressures, the legislators’ attention to a kind of need for change in the educational system is an allied for reform. Recognizing that science education needs improvement is the first step. The important question that follows is what paths educational reform should take. As it is noted by scholars, the educational systems are under a broader trend called Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)¹ and we need to watch carefully how the purpose of schooling is being addressed in such reforms². 

Here is a critical point in STEAM programs. A widely practiced approach is to establish teacher qualification to STEAM from the outside in, or with top down orientation. That is, teachers are required to apply the “STEAM ideas” which someone from the outside of the school has created or established. Teachers are called to participate in courses to improve their classes through STEAM, whether they like it or not. Whether it makes sense to them and their students or not. In this format, we must recognize that the autonomy and subjectivity of the teacher is not exactly the priority¹, since he/she is much more an applicator of the STEAM agenda than a professional whose practice is being valued. It is almost as if what his/her thoughts, needs, and knowledge don’t really matter. As the main thing is to ensure that students are immersed in STEAM classes². Curiously, this is the same perspective we like to criticize in the so-called traditional teachers: that they teach as if what the students think and know doesn’t matter.

Another point is that for any program to succeed, be it STEAM or not, it is necessary to take into account the deficits of teacher training both in terms of content and pedagogy. In the Brazilian context, almost half of the teachers do not have adequate background in the subject area they currently teach. And then, when the Ministry of Education decides to implement STEAM, it is absolutely necessary that this come accompanied by robust teacher qualification programs. Otherwise, no matter how good any reform may be, it will likely be lost within the school systems which already have to deal with a myriad of other problems.

In other words, teacher training is both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge in STEAM.

Like any technicist pedagogical model, the scientific determinism often accompanies here. The vision of determinist or Cartesian science, in short, is the one whose science is presented as neutral, infallible, objective, free of ideologies and power disputes, made by geniuses and capable of unveiling all the questions of the natural world. The Sociology of Science has brought many advances in our understanding of science as a field and as a social construct¹. However, when the STEM movement is endorsed by the rationality that STEM (without A) is the only thing that matters in the curriculum², the social dimension of science tends to be ignored.

It is important to be aware of the common notion, that technology and science will solve all of humanity’s problems, regardless of the social, cultural, political and geopolitical aspects they have. That is, in STEAM practices, one must be careful to avoid over-emphasizing the role of science and technology on issues that go far beyond inventing a machine or molecule¹. Not every problem in the contemporary world is solved only with science. And this is where the sociology of science and STEAM projects integrated with the social sciences help not to fall into traps. As long as we are talking of an educational movement that wants to integrate areas, we need to ensure that it is genuinely integrating the knowledge.