Exploring Early Childhood Teachers’ Beliefs About STEAM Education in Saudi Arabia

This study explores Saudi teachers’ beliefs about STEAM education in early childhood education settings. The study sample consisted of 245 teachers working in kindergartens. The participants completed a survey comprising twelve items to elaborate teachers’ beliefs toward implementing STEAM practices in their classrooms, as well as four close-ended questions to evaluate teachers’ knowledge of and familiarity with the terminology of STEAM education and their professional training in STEAM-related content. The findings reveal overall positive beliefs toward STEAM education for young children and rather moderate beliefs regarding the implementation of STEAM practices. The results also reveal that teachers were somewhat familiar with the term STEAM; however, they reported limited knowledge of the integration process and basic strategies and skills needed for its implementation. The results also demonstrate that the majority of the Saudi teachers participating in this study believed they needed additional professional development and training regarding STEAM implementation. A chi-square test indicated statistically significant associations between teachers’ knowledge of STEAM education and their beliefs and between teachers’ previous professional training in STEAM education and their beliefs. The implications and future recommendations are also discussed.

Integrating Computational Thinking and Mathematics

Globally, computational thinking and coding in schools has become more popular as well as a growing area of interest in education reform. Coupling coding with creative thinking promises to meaningfully engage students in their learning and to improve their coding and computational thinking skills. This prompts discussions about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics), which promotes creativity and innovation through the integration of the arts in STEM subjects. This study addresses the following question: What mathematics and computational thinking do students learn through different models of STEAM education in non-profit and in-school contexts? A small sample was taken of four different STEAM programs in Ontario, Canada. We carried out a qualitative case study with 103 participants, 19 adults and 84 students. The findings from this study have implications for designing, implementing and researching K-8 STEAM programs that promote coding and computational thinking skills in the context of learning mathematics.

USING OF VIRTUAL REALITY TOOLS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF STEAM EDUCATION IN GENERAL SECONDARY EDUCATION

The article researches the use of virtual reality to support STEAM education in general secondary school. To study the impact of STEAM education, the authors proposed a teaching project for the secondary school about convex mirrors and their importance for special visibility and human safety, where the interviewed teachers were able to learn about a real example of the implementation of STEAM education for teaching their disciplines. The purpose of the article is to analyze the meanings and approaches to the use of virtual reality by teachers for organizing the STEAM-oriented learning environment and to identify the basic requirements to VR for supporting the implementation and development of STEAM education. One of the main trends of education modernization is STEAM education, which involves the integration of the natural sciences, the technological sciences, engineering, mathematics and art in the learning process, in particular, at general secondary schools. In light of the findings, researchers indicate that electronic educational resources (including VR & AR) are not only teaching tools for teachers but also a source of inspiration for students, which motivates and stimulates creative thinking. This is an important point considering that creativity is increasingly an important life skill that can help young people cope with the difficulties and uncertainties in their future careers in the fields of STEAM. Prospects for further research are seen in the creation of a model for assessing student performance in STEAM projects. The authors are planning to take into account the differences and features of the use of virtual reality for learning STEAM in schools in different countries, including Ukraine, Spain and Kazakhstan, when creating a multilevel model of STEAM-oriented learning environment using virtual reality tools. The purpose of the model is to evaluate not only the results of tests taken by students after learning this material but also their personal contribution to the final project product, their leadership skills, creative ideas and suggestions, abilities and skills in using ICT and VR in project research. In our next publications, we will focus on several Spanish and Kazakhstani secondary schools to detect the possible differences found in the use of virtual reality to support STEAM education in Ukrainian schools.

A STEAM Practice Approach to Integrate Architecture, Culture and History on a Mathematical Problem-Solving Basis

In this paper we propose STEAM practices that would foster mathematics learning through modelling architecture while connecting to culture and history. The architectural modelling process is applied by the teachers as participants of these practices from different countries allowing a broad cultural and historical connection to mathematics education. The modelling is implemented in GeoGebra platform as it is an open-source platform to allow teachers to model on a mathematics basis. The architectural modelling process does not provide participants with steps to follow but rather allows them to explore the architectural models’ components and construct them with various approaches which may foster problem solving techniques. We aim to investigate how different phases of this approach (such as motivation, modeling, and printing process) reflect on opportunities of learning in STEAM education, with a particular lens in mathematical development from open tasks. This paper will show two use cases that took place in Upper Austria and the MENA region.

STEAM Course Development and Design based on Design Thinking: A Case Study on “Self-induction Demonstrator”

STEAM education is a new direction of education reform in the 21st century. It can cultivate students’ ability to creatively solve practical problems, integrate and apply interdisciplinary knowledge. It is an effective way to help students master the 21st century’s abilities. All countries spare no effort to let it be local Take root. The integration of design thinking and STEAM education provides a good opportunity for students' comprehensive and creative development. Therefore, we use the D. School design thinking model developed by Stanford University to develop a STEAM course based on design thinking to improve students' STEAM literacy and the skills and abilities that company needs for high-quality development. This STEAM course takes "Self-induction Demonstrator" as the project theme, including five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideal, Prototype, and Test. It aims to provide a reference paradigm for the design and implementation of the K-12 STEAM course, and promote the deep integration of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and art.

Automatic Evaluation of Piano Performances for STEAM Education

Music plays an important part in the lives of people from an early age. Many parents invest in music education of various types for their children as arts and music are of economic importance. This leads to a new trend that the STEAM education system draws more and more attention from the STEM education system that has been developed over several years. For example, parents let their children listen to music since they were in the womb and invest their money in studying music at an early age, especially for playing and learning musical instruments. As far as education is concerned, assessment for music performances should be standardized, not based on the individual teacher’s standard. Thus, in this study, automatic assessment methods for piano performances were developed. Two types of piano articulation were taken into account, namely “Legato” with vibration notes using sustain pedals and “Staccato” with detached notes without the use of sustain pedals. For each type, piano sounds were analyzed and classified into “Good”, “Normal”, and “Bad” categories. The study investigated four approaches for this task: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes (NB), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). The experiments were conducted using 4680 test samples, including isolated scale notes and kids’ songs, produced by 13 performers. The results show that the CNN approach is superior to the other approaches, with a classification accuracy of more than eighty percent.

Applying STEAM Teaching Method to Primary Schools to Improve the Quality of Teaching and Learning for Children

Unlike the traditional educational model with the way teachers lecture, students take notes making students feel boring and not very effective. STEAM education is a modern educational model that focuses on practice for students to discover and learn on their own. Therefore, it will inspire learning to students, sparking creativity and passion in children. Originating in the US, STEAM education has been interested in and researched for many years, in countries around the world. In the context of the industrial revolution 4.0, jobs and occupations in society related to STEAM education fields tend to increase. The overall goal of STEAM education is not only to create understanding of STEAM and the qualities of 21st century citizens, but also to develop human resources in STEAM fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Researching on STEAM education has been, and is being, interested by many educators, the research trend in this field will continue to be developed in the future not only in the world but also in the Vietnam. This article addresses the pros and cons of STEAM education, and was completed with support from survey results conducted at some International Primary School, Ho Chi Minh City. The article uses quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis as well as some results from previous studies, in order to clarify the issue of educating children to access scientific knowledge easily. The results show that we need to widely apply this method not only in primary schools but also in all primary schools in Vietnam in order to improve the quality of teaching, and to train human resources for 4.0 industries.