Abstract:
In recent years – particularly in the United States but increasingly so in the Anglophone world – the term STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) has come to dominate the space previously occupied by Science education (and to a lesser extent, Mathematics education). Proponents of STEM education have pointed to the promise that STEM education might offer an engaging pathway for students towards interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving and inquiry; indeed, in ways that may be extended to include the Arts (STEAM). Such hopes are predicated on an array of assumptions about how the STEM (or STEAM) sub-disciplines may ‘get long’. It is therefore important to questions these assumptions and examine more closely the points of disciplinary intersection between the STEM sub-disciplines and between STEM and other disciplines. To this end, this presentation seeks to examine how practice – artistic-practice, scientific-practice – can bring these assumptions into relief against the aims of both disciplinary and interdisciplinary education.