Arts Integration and STEAM. What’s the difference?
What Brené Brown, Leslie Knope and PAIR Program Founder, Sally Baker have in common.
A quick Google search will show you that just about everyone who has taught with a multi-disciplinary approach has their own definition of Arts Integration and/or STEAM. So what’s the big deal? Why is it important to draw boundaries around the definitions of these two widely-used terms? Why can’t you use a pinch of this and the essence of that to create your own original recipe? Arts Integration and STEAM are not interchangeable terms, and understanding the difference between them is important. Keep reading!
For the better part of the last 20 years, I have been working through the process of defining what Arts Integration and STEAM actually look like as part of teaching in Georgia. There is a sizable body of research that exists to show how both Arts Integration and STEAM increase student engagement, support test scores in Math, ELA, and Science and build community in classrooms. Figuring out how to concretely define both disciplines can help guide what you do in your classroom on Monday morning.
Spoiler alert: the major difference lies in our goals.
When I was in the classroom, I always taught some combination of high school English Language Arts and Drama. My experience as a classroom teacher was always focused on the Georgia Standards of Excellence for my assigned courses, but the more I taught, the more I realized I was incorporating other subjects. How could I direct Annie without talking about The Great Depression and Hoovervilles? How can I teach students Set Design without understanding mathematical scale and angles? Can teachers even teach about poetry without addressing time signatures in music?
An interdisciplinary approach just made sense to me.
One day in a faculty meeting, a Science teacher was chatting with me about struggling with her students’ ability to recall the functions of the parts of a cell. I made the offhand comment that she should use Theatre to teach cells. Next thing I knew, I was stopping by her Biology class to teach the Theatre game called Ensemble Squash and incorporating science content, teaching both Science and Theatre Georgia Standards of Excellence. Students were laughing and discussing the best ways to perform “cell membrane.” She and I continued to talk about how Theatre and Science could connect. By the faculty meeting the next month, I was training our entire faculty in what I now know to be:
Arts Integration: An approach to teaching that fuses together arts and another subject to meet the objectives of both subjects equitably.
Notice that Arts Integration describes holding the arts and content standard equitably-- to the same rigor, both in teaching and assessing. Those science students had to show growth in both their understanding of cell parts and their understanding of theatre in order for the lesson to represent Arts Integration. (When the arts are used to support another subject but students don’t learn about that art, that’s called Arts Enhancement. Like, singing the Alphabet Song. You learn the order of the letters of the alphabet, but you don’t learn anything about music: pitch, rhythm, etc.).
But what about STEAM?
STEAM and Arts Integration are related but they are not the same.
STEAM education bridges disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics consistently and regularly as an access point for students to build and demonstrate understanding.
STEAM uses Arts Integration as a tool, but teaching this way involves a great deal more. Teaching through STEAM is a paradigm shift-- a whole new way to envision classrooms and learning. PAIR is headquartered in Georgia, and teaching in Georgia STEAM schools often involves:
Problem Based Learning (PBL): long term learning with real-life applications that involve hands-on student experience.
Teaching in Georgia in a STEAM school usually means that learning is focused around a PBL topic of inquiry, such as Solving Student Hunger or Agriculture and Environmentalism while addressing grade-level Georgia Standards of Excellence.
Diving into this inquiry often means following an Engineering Design Process (EDP) as well.
EDP is a cyclical process focusing on students solving problems. The EDP has several steps including students identifying a real-world problem, conducting background research, posing multiple solutions, developing and testing prototypes, evaluating results and redesigning based on their findings.
It’s more likely that teachers could have a stand alone Arts Integration lesson than a STEAM lesson. Arts Integration can be an isolated connection between Math and Music, for example. STEAM involves a much more complex approach to identifying and solving real-world problems. It’s not just using classroom robots or creating a model of simple machines. It’s a consistent shift in how students construct, connect and express their knowledge.
Here’s the big difference between Arts Integration and STEAM: it’s in the goals.
Arts Integration Goals:
Learning in and through the arts to increase student engagement
Equity
Classroom community
Depth of knowledge
Student achievement
Social-emotional learning
STEAM Goals:
Bridging the disciplines of STEAM in order to provide problem-solving practice through guided inquiry
Building real-world community partnerships
Deepening skills in critical thinking and design
Creating a sense of wonder and curiosity in students
Arts Integrated learning and STEAM access the best kinds of understanding of the world. Both engage students deeply and ask them to think about what they are learning in multiple ways. Both provide opportunities for student choice, differentiation and creative expression. Both ask students to think and feel-- to use heart and mind to fully understand new information.
Internationally best-selling author, speaker and philosophizer- extraordinaire, Brené Brown , says
“We move what we’re learning
from our heads
to our hearts
through our hands.”
I believe she is describing Arts Integration and STEAM. True learning isn’t memorizing or regurgitating. It’s understanding how things are the way they are, why people made them that way, and trying to solve the challenges that exist. Why would we teach in any other way?
PAIR equips teachers with Arts Integration tools and is a proud partner of STEAM education.
It’s a lot of work, yes. This kind of teaching is not done on worksheets. Teachers may not have all of the answers. Student responses are sometimes unpredictable. But is it worth it?
Leslie Knope (the fictitious lead character in NBC’s show Parks and Recreation), my personal hero, says it like this:
“I have the most valuable commodity in America:
the blind, stubborn belief that I am doing what is right.”
So be encouraged, my friends. It’s worth the work because Arts Integration and STEAM change the lives of our students. May your journey have the emotional connection of Brené Brown and the persistence of Leslie Knope!
If you want a partner in your Arts Integration or STEAM journey, reach out! PAIR is here to support you. Contact us to find out more about what the PAIR Program can do for you.
