An Analysis of STEAM Disciplinary Interrelationships Described in Abstracts of Higher Education Articles

Jeanine M. Williamson and Anchalee Panigabutra-Roberts, University of Tennessee Knoxville

According to Spelt et al. (2009, 365), the “integration or synthesis of knowledge is seen as the defining characteristic of interdisciplinarity.” STEAM approaches to education (STEM plus Arts Education) offer students interdisciplinary experiences that can further a number of pedagogical goals, such as engagement, development of creative skills, and chances to see how disciplines can be applied in other areas. STEAM approaches have been highlighted in several papers in IMPACT (Jay, 2014; Novotny & Wright, 2020; Ross, 2016). This paper shows how the Biglan/Becher taxonomy of disciplines can be used to analyze disciplinary interrelationships in STEAM (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Biglan, 1973), with the ultimate goal of categorizing ways STEAM approaches can facilitate student learning in higher education. There is not just one approach to STEAM; there are many, and a Biglan/Becher analysis underscores and helps make sense of this diversity.

The Development of STEAM (STEM + Arts)

The American educational system is deeply rooted in Western and European intellectual history and practices. The idea of experiential learning essential in STEAM can be traced back as early as that of John Locke, the late 17th-century empiricist. In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke argued that ideas come from experience, through the senses, perception and reflection (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001a). Giambattista Vico, professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples from 1699 to 1741, also argued in his book, New Science (1725), that human beings in their origins are not rational like philosophers, but imaginative like poets (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001). These examples of arts and science connection with the interaction among the mind, experience and imagination were acknowledged by both thinkers and influencers of education in the 17th century or the age of Enlightenment.

A classic and well-known example of arts’ integration with science is the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. He embodies the integration of arts and science in his anatomic drawings and his arts based on his studies of human anatomy via postmortem human dissection (Sterpetti, 2016). Thus STEAM in the history of education and in practice existed long before the acronym was coined. However, the creation of the acronym, STEAM, was a turning point in the modern American educational history. STEAM influenced the change in curriculum and educational standards since Georgette Yakman coined the term, STEAM, and developed it as a new framework in integrative education (Yakman, 2008). Yakman has worked to promote STEAM as an educational model of how the traditional academic subjects (silos) of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and arts, can be structured into a framework by which to plan integrative curricula. She posited that the integration could be done in two ways: by each discipline’s inclusion of elements of other discipline(s) into its own standards and practices or based on the concept and practices of STEM when the subjects are purposefully integrated (Yakman, 2010). While Yakman’s framework was established in 2008 based on her earlier research, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) took on the STEAM acronym to promote its new STEAM Initiative in 2010 as the foundation for STEAM movement in education in the U.S. and worldwide (Allina, 2018). At RISD, the objectives of the STEAM movement are:

  • Transform research policy to place Art + Design at the center of STEM
  • Encourage integration of Art + Design in K-20 education
  • Influence employers to hire artists and designers to drive innovation (ibid).

The school applied STEAM in studio-based learning initiatives, from RISD’s Nature Lab, where gourds, taxidermy, microscopy, and art/design/nature/science comingle, to the Maharam STEAM Fellowships in Applied Art and Design, where students were funded to complete internships in local government and at places like the Mayo Clinic and NPR Science (Maeda, 2013).

As RISD promoted STEAM beyond its campus to the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., STEAM has become a focal point in U.S. policies in the early 21st Century. Allina (2018) reviewed and traced the development of STEAM educational policy in the United States to National Research Council’s 2003 report on the major benefits of the integration of information technology and creative practices (ITCP) in the art and design and encouraged the U.S.’s strategic investment in this domain of the ITCP (National Research Council (U.S.), 2003). Another key U.S. policy development was a House resolution in 2010 introduced by Congressman Jim Langevin with the call of action that by adding art and design to STEM fields, it encouraged innovation and economic growth in the U.S. (reintroduced in 2015 (U.S. House. H.Res.247 (IH), 2015)). In 2013, a bi-partisan STEAM Caucus was formed in February, led by Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) (Bonamici, 2013). The landmark policy for STEAM as a culmination of political effort was the inclusion of STEAM in new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – which superseded No Child Left Behind (P.L.114-95, 2015). Another crucial bill in the same year, America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2015, integrated STEAM into Federal STEM programming, research, and innovation activities. It captured the rationale to add STEAM into the U.S. education and research policies as follows:

  • (3) STEAM, which is the integration of arts and design, broadly defined, into Federal STEM programming, research, and innovation activities, is a method-validated approach to maintaining the competitiveness of the United States in both work force and innovation and to increasing and broadening students’ engagement in the STEM fields;
  • (4) STEM graduates need more than technical skills to thrive in the 21st century workforce; they also need to be creative, innovative, collaborative, and able to think critically;
  • (5) STEAM should be recognized as providing value to STEM research and education programs across Federal agencies, without supplanting the focus on the traditional STEM disciplines;
  • (6) Federal agencies should work cooperatively on interdisciplinary initiatives to support the integration of arts and design into STEM, and current interdisciplinary programs should be strengthened (U.S. House. H.R. 1898 (IH). Sec. 204, 65, 2015).

Since the development of STEAM as a concept, we can see the surge in STEAM practices, research and publications as reflected in the publications by year on STEAM based on Web of Science database as shown in figure 1:

The integration of Arts into STEM = STEAM happened in diverse ways over time. We are interested in how the interaction among the disciplines in STEAM would produce new educational methods, knowledge and even products. We found that STEAM integration resulted in new exciting knowledge, but also had its own complexity that continues to make STEAM an elusive subject to grapple with, as reflected in the STEAM literature and in our further discussion.

Application of Biglan/Becher Taxonomy of Disciplines to STEAM

Despite the growing development of STEAM, consensus has not been reached about what STEAM should encompass. Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro (2019) recognized that there have been a number of definitions of STEAM in the literature, prompting them to write an integrative review. One reason why there may have been many definitions of STEAM is the variety of disciplines combined in STEAM educational techniques. We argue that using a simplifying conceptualization of disciplines could help make sense of the disciplinary interrelationships in STEAM, suggesting similarities and differences between the co-occurring disciplines. Biglan (1973) developed such a conceptualization. The Biglan taxonomy of disciplines is based on three dimensions: hard/soft, pure/applied, and life/non-life. In this paper, the first two of these dimensions were used. An example of a hard-pure discipline in Biglan’s system is chemistry. An example of a hard-applied discipline is engineering. Art is a soft-pure discipline, and education is a soft-applied discipline. Becher and Trowler extended the Biglan system decades later and gave detailed definitions of the hard-soft dimension and the pureapplied dimension (2001).

Hard-pure knowledge is concerned with universals and has a quantitative emphasis. Soft-pure knowledge is “in contrast, reiterative, holistic, concerned with particulars and having a qualitative bias” (Neumann et al., 2002, 406). Multiple authorship is common in hard-pure disciplines, whereas solo inquiry is typical in soft-pure disciplines.

Hard-applied knowledge is “concerned with mastery of the physical environment and geared towards products and techniques,” whereas soft-applied knowledge is “concerned with the enhancement of professional practice and aiming to yield protocols and procedures” (Neumann et al., 2002)

While the Biglan/Becher framework is old, it is still being used (Simpson, 2017), and we found it to be a useful simplifying system for the diversity of interrelationships in STEAM.

Methods

We analyzed abstracts of 51 articles and conference papers on STEAM approaches in higher education, or in higher education publications. To find the articles, a search of Web of Science was done covering the time period from 2012 to May 31, 2020. The search terms were STEM AND arts in the Topic field refined by STEAM AND arts. Of the 148 records found, 51 pertained to a higher education context.

Once we had downloaded the abstracts and bibliographic information, we coded the disciplines described in the abstracts as hard or soft and pure or applied. For example, art was coded as soft-pure. The Biglan/Becher system lists which disciplines belong to the four categories. We chose to focus on abstracts, even after looking at the full text papers where available, because abstracts delineate the central focus of an article. We believe that authors have pinpointed what they consider the most salient points of articles in abstracts. In addition, we found that the full text of those articles we examined did not yield additional disciplines beyond those described in the abstracts. The Biglan categorizations for disciplines mentioned in the abstracts are shown in Table 1. After coding the abstracts, we then looked for patterns in the co-occurrence of disciplines.

Results Eleven abstracts described combinations of soft-pure disciplines (usually art) with hard-applied disciplines (usually computer science or engineering). (See Figure 2.) Of these, about half reported on combinations of hard-applied disciplines and soft-pure disciplines in specific STEM or art projects or creations. For example, one abstract described using materials science to understand the materials used in stained glass windows or cave paintings (Perez et al., 2018). Similarly, abstracts described the use of computer science in a music remixing project (Freeman et al., 2015), the use of computer science in a games design project of new media arts (Moumoutzis et al., 2017), and aerospace engineering in a cultural heritage project (Richter et al., 2014). Origami was used in engineering in one case (Kennedy et al., 2016), an example of the application of art to a hard-applied discipline. Finally, several topic areas were described as useful for combining aspects of both hard-applied disciplines and soft-pure disciplines: green IT (Lamb & Marimekala, 2018), e-textiles (Peppler, 2013), robots (Jeon & Park, 2016), additive manufacturing (Williams et al., 2016), 3D printing (Chien & Chu, 2018), and nano projects (Claville et al., 2019).

Other abstracts described more general combinations of hard-applied and soft-pure disciplines that could have applications beyond specific STEM or art disciplines. These included applications of art in transdisciplinary STEAM projects at Drexel University (Kim et al., 2019), the development of presentation skills in an English for Specific Purposes class (Saienko et al., 2019), and the combination of STEM and art disciplines (in this case, environmental engineering and arts education) in a multidisciplinary class (Sochacka et al., 2016). Additional general abstracts discussed the STEAM approach (STEAM and design) (Donohue et al., 2013) and maker movements (Clapp & Jimenez, 2016). Other abstracts explored psychological or cognitive benefits of engineering and art interrelationships, such as developing creativity and curiosity in engineers (Donohue et al., 2012) and reflecting on the similar visual thinking of artists and engineers (Robinson & Baxter, 2013).

A few abstracts discussed a combination of soft-pure and soft-applied disciplines. Philosophy (soft-pure) was combined with education (soft-applied) in a STEAM position paper (English, 2017), a conceptual model of STEAM (Quigley et al., 2017), and a philosophy of STEAM in the Anthropocene (Guyotte, 2020).

A hard-applied discipline was combined with a hard-pure discipline in a STEAM example of two thermal machines (mechanical and human) (Garcia et al., 2018).

Abstracts that focused primarily on soft-applied disciplines were all in education, including ones on arts integration in STEM university programs (Ghanbari, 2015) and a discussion of women in STEM programs (Lopez-Gonzalez, 2017) Two abstracts discussed the views of education students towards STEAM (Jamil et al., 2018; So et al., 2019).

Several abstracts described the combination of hard applied and soft applied disciplines, particularly engineering with education. For example, a quantitative STEAM study compared STEAM and non-STEAM teaching methods in engineering (Yee-King et al., 2017). Similarly, engineering related abstracts discussed the unwillingness of engineering faculty to try active learning approaches because of their “disciplinary egocentrism” (Connor et al., 2015) and the encouragement of women in engineering by offering them an art minor (Dahle et al., 2017). Two abstracts about AI also combined hard-applied with soft-applied disciplines. One discussed the application of AI to business (predicting stock market characteristics) as a pedagogical technique (Song, 2017). Another described the development of “AI thinking” in students learning about artificial intelligence (How & Hung, 2019).

Many abstracts reported on combinations of soft-pure and hard-pure disciplines. For example, the International Day of Light resulted in a garden exhibit illustrating photonics concepts (Posner et al., 2016). Abstracts discussed the potential interrelationships of music and science (Minces et al., 2016); history in STEM education (Leslie, 2014); and humanities and chemistry (Faulconer et al., 2020). Other STEM and art combinations included film and dinosaurs (Sumida & Jefcoat, 2018); mathematics and Op Art (Chehlarova, 2019); and the artistic applications of the brain-computer interface (Andujar et al., 2015). Other abstracts discussed the benefits to art students from STEM (Guyotte et al., 2015) and science-inspired art (Poindexter et al., 2016). Scientific outreach was the focus of a NASA STEAM project (Zevin et al., 2015) and in a combination of microbiology and art (Segarra et al., 2018). Table 2 gives examples of coding employed in our study with topics drawn from the abstracts’ full texts to illustrate the interdisciplinary dynamics.

Soft-Pure Discipline Hard-Applied Discipline Topic Article
Art (painting) Material science Materials used in stained glass windows or cave paintings Perez et al., 2018
Music Computer Science Music remixing project Freeman et al., 2015
Art (media) Computer Science Game design project Moumoutzis et al., 2017
Art; Archeology; Architecture Aerospace engineering Cultural heritage diagnostics Richter et al., 2014
Art Engineering Origami Kennedy et al., 2016
Art (design) Computer science; Engineering Modular Robotic Construction Kit Jeon & Park, 2016

 

Soft-Pure Discipline Soft-Applied Discipline Topic Article
Philosophy Education STEM integration; STEAM English, 2017
Philosophy Education Philosophy of STEAM education Guyotte, 2020

 

Hard-Pure Discipline Hard-Applied Discipline Topic Article
Anatomy; Biology Material science & engineering Comparing food metabolism (human body) and fuel combustion (internal combustion engine) Garcia et al., 2018

 

Soft-Applied Discipline Hard-Applied Discipline Topic Article
Education Engineering Comparing STEAM and nonSTEAM teaching methods in engineering Yee-King et al., 2017
Education Engineering Women in engineering and an art minor Dahle et al., 2017
Education Computer science; Business Application of AI to business (predicting stock market characteristics) as a pedagogical technique Song, 2017

 

Soft-Applied Discipline Topic Article
Education Arts integration in STEM university programs Ghanbari, 2015
Education Women in STEM programs Lopez-Gonzalez, 2017

 

Soft-Pure Discipline Hard-Pure Discipline Topic Article
Art (exhibit; design) Biological Sciences (Horticulture) &

Hard-Applied Discipline

Engineering (Photonics)

International Day of Light; a garden exhibit illustrating photonics concepts; with optical fiber optics integrated into a garden exhibit Posner et al., 2016
Art (animation & visual-effect artistry) Biology (animals’ anatomy) Animation and visual-effect artists and biological understanding of animals’ anatomy Sumida & Jefcoat, 2018

Table. 2. Case Examples of the Integration of STEAM Disciplines with the Outcome

 

Discussion

Overall the abstracts show both divergence in disciplinary combinations, as when hard-applied disciplines co-occur with soft-pure disciplines (with no shared Biglan/Becher dimensions), and in other cases the combining disciplines share dimensions (for example, as with soft-applied/hard-applied, soft-applied/soft-pure, and soft-pure/hard-pure) as shown in Figure 2.

Divergence in Biglan/Becher dimensions: Hard-applied with Soft-pure combinations

The most frequent type of disciplinary combination was hard-applied with soft-pure. The hard-applied disciplines (usually engineering) have an emphasis on products and techniques, whereas the soft-pure disciplines (usually art) have a holistic, qualitative emphasis concerned with particulars (Neumann et al., 2002). Sometimes the emphasis was on how the techniques of hard-applied disciplines could be applied in artistic endeavors (stained glass windows and cave paintings, cultural heritage diagnostics, sound remixing, etc.), whereas in other cases artistic techniques were seen as useful additions to engineering fields (for example, additive manufacturing).

Even though art is very different from engineering in the Biglan/Becher taxonomy, the STEAM abstracts described ways the two disciplines could be complementary and share similar aims. For example, art was seen as being useful to stimulate creativity and curiosity in engineers, mental traits useful both to artists and engineers. Another abstract described how both engineering and art employed visual thinking.

This leads to the observation that STEM and art disciplines have both similarities and differences. For example, John Maeda, one of the original developers of STEAM at RISD, wrote a blog discussing why artists and scientists were more alike than different. He pointed out, “Artists and scientists tend to approach problems with a similar open-mindedness and inquisitiveness — they both do not fear the unknown, preferring leaps to incremental steps.” (Maeda, 2013, July 11, par. 7) Wilson (2002) listed several similarities and differences between science and art. An example of a similarity was “Both value the careful observation of their environments to gather information through the senses.” Both science and art also seek to create works of universal relevance. An example of a difference was that art favors emotion and intuition whereas science favors reason. In addition, art mostly uses visual communication, whereas science mostly uses narrative explanation. Whether the similarities or differences of STEM and art are emphasized, the disciplines can complement one another in several ways, since the results show a wide variety of purposes for combining art and STEM disciplines.

Shared Biglan/Becher dimensions

Soft-pure and soft-applied combinations

This relatively infrequent type of co-occurrence usually combined philosophy with education. The emphasis was on how educators were theorizing about STEAM. Soft-pure disciplines have a holistic, qualitative emphasis concerned with particulars, whereas soft-applied disciplines are concerned with the enhancement of professional practice (Neumann et al., 2002). Soft-applied disciplines tend to apply soft-pure knowledge (Neumann et al., 2002), as the abstracts in this type of combination do. In this case, the education abstracts apply philosophy.

Hard-pure and hard-applied combination

Similar to soft-applied and soft-pure, hard-applied knowledge applies hard-pure knowledge (Neumann et al., 2002). Hard-applied disciplines are focused in developing products and techniques while hard-pure disciplines are focused on universals concerning the physical environment (Neumann et al., 2002). Our results showed that hard-applied and hardpure was a rather infrequent combination in the STEAM literature (just one instance). A possible reason for this is that this combination leaves out art, one of the essential elements of STEAM.

Soft-pure and hard-pure combination

This was a more frequent combination, in which Science was combined with Art. Hard-pure and soft-pure disciplines on the face of it are different, in that hard-pure disciplines have a quantitative focus and are concerned with universals while soft-pure disciplines have a qualitative focus and are concerned with particulars (Neumann et al., 2002). Still, observation is a key component of both categories of disciplines (Wilson, 2002), and perhaps the two categories are similar in that they are basic rather than applied (concerned with a product, technique, or improvement of a professional program) (Neumann et al., 2002).

Hard-applied and soft-applied combination

Our results showed that this combination frequently included engineering or computer science and education. This makes sense since the abstracts of the articles in our data set were chosen for their relevance to higher education and, by the definition of STEAM, could include Technology disciplines (engineering). Although art is not explicitly a focus of these abstracts, it is assumed that the articles are connected to STEAM pedagogy. The applied element of hard-applied and soft-applied disciplines gives them a point of commonality, even if these disciplinary categories are rather different on the face of it.

Pedagogical implications of the disciplinary combinations

The disciplinary combinations have the potential for engaging students in different ways. In the case of hard-applied and pure-soft combinations, students can benefit from immersion with the differences of technology and art. In some cases, art serves as a way of making technology more interesting to students in order to increase the number of students studying STEM. In other cases, technology is given an interesting application in an artistic context, showing the wider importance of technology in perhaps unexpected areas.

In the case of combinations with one or both shared Biglan/Becher dimensions, students can benefit from seeing both similarities and differences with the co-occurring disciplines. For example, with soft-pure and soft-applied combinations, students learn about both exploratory or expressive knowledge and professional, applied knowledge. With hard-pure and hard-applied disciplines, the student sees both knowledge concerned with discovering universals about the physical world and applications of this knowledge. This can be useful in giving students a useful real-world context for the pure knowledge.

With soft-pure and hard-pure combinations, the students can see similarities between hard and soft disciplines that share the pure dimension, namely the exploratory or observational characteristics of both kinds of knowledge, although hard disciplines are concerned with universals and soft disciplines are concerned with particulars. With soft-applied and hard-applied disciplines, students also see potential similarities between another kind of combination of hard and soft disciplines, with both kinds of combining disciplines having an applied focus, or practical application in the world.

This analysis of STEAM articles’ abstracts provided a snapshot of the growth of STEAM as an interdisciplinary subject area over the past decade. Applying the Biglan/Becher taxonomy to analyze these abstracts yielded insight into the dynamics among the STEAM disciplines as influenced by the maker movement, digital media and technologies, with increasing interests in robotics and artificial intelligence. The case examples provided concrete ideas for STEAM implementation, especially in education. While STEAM is no longer a new interdisciplinary subject area, it is still an uncharted territory with much left to explore in teaching, learning and research for all educational levels.

Conclusion

The Biglan/Becher taxonomy provided a useful method for analyzing interrelationships of disciplines in STEAM articles’ abstracts. An interesting finding was that, while some combinations of disciplines contained shared Biglan/Becher dimensions, many did not. One might surmise from this finding that STEAM focuses on differences between disciplines as much or perhaps even more than similarities in its disciplinary interrelationships. The unexpected application of art to technology or technology to art can be a powerful source of engagement for students. Higher-education instructors could highlight the Biglan/Becher dimensions in future STEAM instruction if they want students to think about similarities and differences between STEM and art. Overall the analysis yielded interesting insights about STEAM approaches in higher education, making us aware of the often interdisciplinary nature of STEM and art combinations. We consider students’ reflection on similarities and differences between STEM and art to be one important interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge produced by STEAM approaches. Future analysis could examine the full text of the articles in more detail to look for specific examples of ways similarities and differences between STEM and Art are used to further pedagogical goals in higher education interdisciplinary studies.

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