As both a parent and a science educator, I get overwhelmed at times by the sheer amount of stuff out there for kids and science. STEM toys, and STEAM toys, and STEM camps, and maker spaces. And the alphabet soup of acronyms related to the various ways of how we should teach science NGSS, STEM, STEAM, STREAM, STEMLE it goes on and on. I realized I may not be helping things by adding another way of thinking about science education that whole biology or philosophy that I mentioned in the beginning of course one. But I want to take a minute to step back with you and think about STEAM, the integration of arts with science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. This is important as more STEM, STEAM, or arts specific charter schools pop up. And we need to consider where to send our kids to school. Or for schools with limited budgets who are considering cutting their arts programs. What is the implication for losing arts programs on both our schools and our communities? The Next Generation Science Standards, or the NGSS were designed to improve science education in the United States. Current prediction suggests that the current rate of graduates in STEM fields is not going to be sufficient to meet the needs of tomorrow's workforce. We're also faced with consumer decisions too. Are STEM, or STEAM branded toys actually better for our kids? Or is it just another way of hiking up the price on roughly science themed toys? So what makes a STEM toy a STEM toy? And how do we build that connection to the arts? Sometimes STEM toys are focused around some kind of science activities. It's kitchen experiments, or looking for bugs in the backyard. And now there's games that are coming up that teach preschoolers how to code. What about the open-ended toys? Playing wooden blocks has been around for a long time. And now you can go to the store and buy the expensive grandchild of the wooden block magnet tiles. Here's a picture of my son building with magnet tiles. The magnets in each piece allow for a wider range of sculptures in the traditional wooden block. Open-ended toys are very well researched. And they're known to facilitate better educational outcomes. They help foster creativity through open-ended plan. As we've talked about throughout this module and also in course one, creativity is of central importance to the scientific process. We need to generate creative solutions and come up with creative ways to design experiments. We also need creativity and we will interpret scientific findings and make sense out of the world. As we learned through this module generating art is critical to the scientific process. And the arts are critical why we can engage with biology, or any science discipline. So perhaps it isn't surprising now that people are shifting from talking about STEM themed toys, or books, or camps, or whatever, to now STEAM themed. But what does that A for arts really mean? Do we need arts and creativity because it's a required competency to become a successful scientist? Do we need the A for arts and biology because sketching is important for the history of the field and still a valuable way for communicating results? Or is the A for arts just an excuse to go and buy a 3D printer and mainstay in many STEAM maker spaces? True integration of the arts and science comes from a fundamental appreciation for each field alone, plus an acknowledgement of what we can do when we bring the two fields together. As I mentioned in the course introduction, this interdisciplinary perspective is one of the major themes for this course. I don't agree with art for science sake, that arts program should only be maintained to facilitate better STEM outcomes. Art is also important on its own too. Ours grow the artists or art for art's sake, not art for science sake because of the perspective that STEM is somehow more important or better than the arts. There's overwhelming evidence that the arts and music education is good for our children. It's great to support music and arts education, because it supports cognitive development in our children. But also because there's a certain joy associated with creating and sharing music with others. We physiologically respond to music. It's more than just a means to produce science education. Art for the sake of art makes us better scientists and people. And meaningful incorporation of science and arts education together is one step into the future, a way of improving science literacy in this country. When I wrote Biology Everywhere, it was a creative manifestation of my love for science and practice as a science educator. It is a creative production. As well as using arts thrown in, namely communicating my ideas and perspectives of how we can rethink biology education. Now we'll switch to another topic that seems completely separate from biology as well. But is in fact like the arts inextricably bound with biological science, the business of biology.
