We live in the era of technology and computer advancement. Tech is a major part of every industrial career. That is why teaching about computers, designs, and tech is the primary focus of our education curriculum. STEAM education is ideal for teaching the younger generation about design thinking & computational thinking. The curriculum follows a creative and productive teaching method that captures student’s interest in learning these interesting subjects.
Before we talk about why design thinking is important and how STEAM affects it, we should first learn STEAM education as we are aware of the acronym STEM. It is an acronym focusing on the four major career subjects: science, tech, engineering, and math. It is the fastest-growing industrial field and the first choice of students who wants a good career. Although STEM is great as a career path, it is still not an ideal curriculum for school students. The main reason behind it is because it lacks “ARTS,” which is also a major subject.
Why STEAM Education?
Art is also a major career choice for many students. It also represents various professional fields, and just throwing it out of the picture when teaching the younger generation is not acceptable. STEAM education teaches arts as a major subject. Students learn how to integrate these five subjects to develop out-of-the-box thinking and great problem-solving skills. That is why STEAM is the ideal education curriculum for school students.
STEAM education allows students to learn and do whatever they like. When students get the chance to choose any career they want, they start developing an interest in learning. STEAM also shapes their minds to create critical thinking and confidence in themselves no matter what they are doing. That is why, in this modern-day and age, those who come forward after learning through STEAM education perform better in their professional lives. It also shapes the economy and future workforce.
Preparing students for STEAM careers
STEAM education is the best way to prepare students for careers in STEAM fields. It also includes preparing students to integrate design thinking and computational thinking in their professional careers. As you know, everything revolves around tech, science, and math when it comes to industrial fields. And visual arts give a presentation of these major subjects. STEAM education prepares students in a way that helps them develop critical thinking. No matter where they are stuck, they can think of any possible and efficient solution to get out of the bind.
Design Thinking
Other than STEAM education, no better curriculum can make students learn and develop design thinking. The idea of design thinking goes hand in hand with STEAM education. The first step of design thinking is to empathize. In this step, the students become aware of the problem they are facing through communication and self-assessment. After they find the core problem, they move to the next step. In this step, they define the problem and divides all the factors that affect it.
Then they move towards the third step, which is ideate. Here, the student imagines the solution and its components by focusing on the problem. As you can see, till now, STEAM is providing them with the best assistance. Finding the problem and thinking of a quick and effective solution is the result of critical thinking. When these steps are complete, students move towards prototyping. Visual arts help in this stage when the basic image of the solution is taking a form. In the end, with the help of tech and math, the various test proves the vitality of the solution.
From empathizing to testing, everything moves along with the help of STEAM education. This method of problem-solving is ideal as it involves communication, critical thinking, and subject integration. Anyone who learns this kind of problem-solving method will have a bright future no matter what career path they enter. As long as we talk about design thinking, then STEAM education is the ideal choice.
Computational Thinking
Computational thinking is also an ideal method to approach a problem to various problems. It does not depend on many steps as it does in design thinking. The idea behind computational thinking is simple and easy to follow. Finding the solution by following the textbook method. In computational thinking, before finding the solution, students first understand the problem and the various solutions that can be liable. There are four steps of finding a solution, and all of these steps take help from STEAM education.
Computational thinking is the best way to solve complex problems, and everyone knows that. The first step is to decompose the problem. It is the famous divide and conquers rule. You take the big parts at one side, the smaller ones at the other, and try to solve them separately to lower the complexity. After doing that, many similarities among various parts pop out. Then it becomes easy to group these problems and to try to solve them together. Students of STEAM education know how this works because they solve their problems using the same method.
With the addition of critical thinking, problem-solving becomes much easier. The next step is not to get side-tracked by smaller problems and focus on the bigger picture. It is the biggest problem that students that follows other education curriculum comes across. As they only focus on their major subject, they stop looking at the bigger picture. Even if the solution is right at the front, they sometimes ignore it. The integration of Arts in the mix gives students a view of looking at things like an artist. In the end, using tech and math to find the step-by-step solution with algorithms solves the problem using computational thinking.
Recent Findings
As we know that computational thinking is a great way to solve problems, yet it was only introduced a few years back in the education structure. Many education systems didn’t include it as a part of their curriculum. When everything starts moving around tech and computer, the importance of computational thinking also soared. Now it is a major part of the STEAM education curriculum, and it prepares the students to tackle any problem regarding this field.
Just adding computational thinking as part of the education curriculum is not going to change anything. Because teaches can’t make students forcefully develop this type of thinking. That is why following STEAM education is very important. With its unique teaching environment, projects, and various activities, it becomes really easy for students to develop design thinking and computational thinking. When they practice the method repeatedly at school and in their games at home, they quickly develop a great understanding of it.
Conclusion
As you can see, STEAM education focuses on every possible aspect related to problem-solving and preparing students for a bright future. That is why it is also an ideal choice for students who want to learn and become experts in their professional fields. All of these are facts that come out as results of various tests and assessments of STEAM students. If you don’t want your children to lose out to others, you should teach them based on STEAM education.
If you are interested to find out more on STEAM Education, you can contact us at hello@epc-education.com, or fill up this contact form.
EPC Education is a provider of ENGINEERING PLUS CODING and computational & design thinking programmes for students in Singapore, China, Taiwan and Bangladesh.
Founded in 2014, we have since established ourselves among parents, students, schools and government bodies like MOE and IMDA as providers of CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING especially for the Code For Fun programme and simple coding programmes using tablets.
Our unique and fun EPC STEAM programmes are designed to ensure students enjoy the learning process while picking up ESSENTIAL CODING AND COMPUTATIONAL THINKING SKILLS necessary to harness technology to the fullest using easy to understand practices with links to REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS.
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