Extracting the actions of contextual understanding in STEAM research: Direction for STEAM course design

Abstract

The arts could be a catalyst to engage students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Combining science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) is more likely to help students comprehend how scientific knowledge and practices relate to the problems they encounter daily. By encouraging students’ reflections on the sociocultural environment, other people's perspectives, and science history through STEM instruction, “contextual understanding” refers to the most distinctive meaning of art that can highlight the distinctiveness of each context. However, as the meaning of contextual understanding is fairly abstract and concrete actions that learners must display when engaging in STEAM activities have not been defined, it is difficult to provide directions for designing STEAM courses. Thus, we aimed to validate a coding scheme that included four concrete actions of contextual understanding: identification, analysis, moral response, and exhibition. Eleven STEAM researchers participated in the semi-structured interviews. The coding scheme was validated by revealing a fairly similar pattern. Most STEAM researchers concentrated on identifying students in their personal and community histories, fostering their analysis skills, particularly clarifying context by perspective-taking, and letting them demonstrate their learning through explanatory exhibitions in scientific and historical ways; only one researcher instructed students to reflect on ethics.