STEAM VS Arts Integration
Ignite Imagination
What Is STEAM
STEAM represents Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. The use of STEAM takes the rigid information of scientific concepts and ties it together into a creative package.
Realistically STEAM encourages students to look at and think through problems in a logical and analytical perspective while still approaching these problems with out-of-the-box creativity for problem solving instead of just the black and white solutions that rigid information tends to require.
Combining art with scientific concepts is common in a lot of jobs today. A few examples are Architecture, CAD Drawings and even Graphic Design.
What Is Arts Integration
In Arts-Integrated Curriculum, the arts become the approach to teaching and the vehicle for learning. Students meet dual learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to explore connections between an art form and another subject area to gain greater understanding in both. For example, students meet objectives in theater (characterization, stage composition, action, expression) and in social studies. The experience is mutually reinforcing—creating a dramatization provides an authentic context for students to learn more about the social studies content and as students delve deeper into the social studies content their growing understandings impact their dramatizations.
For Arts-Integrated Curriculum to result in deep student understanding in both the art form and the other curriculum area, it requires that teachers engage in professional development to learn about arts standards and how to connect the arts to the curriculum they teach.
(original from The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts) What is Arts Integration? (kennedy-center.org)