If you want your children to have good mental health and a bright future, teaching them problem-solving skills is the best way to go about it. Various studies and facts have already proven that problem-solving skills help with a child’s mental growth and health. Not to mention, it gets rid of any depression your child might face in the future. But it helps the most with their studies and everyday problems. As we all are aware of STEAM education, we also know how important it is for kids to have great problem-solving skills.
Before we talk about the importance and methods to develop your child’s problem-solving skills, let us first discuss what STEAM education is? As you can see, the word STEAM comes from combining five acronyms. Science, tech, engineering, arts, and math represents STEAM itself. We all know about STEM as the fastest-growing industrial field. Everything nowadays either involves technology or science. That is why, for kids to have a better professional career, many educators use STEM subjects as the major education curriculum.
Why STEAM is better than STEM?
STEM only focuses on four major subjects, limiting the number of professional careers that students can choose for themselves. It also somehow limits their potential. If a child is better at any subject and is not a part of STEM, they will forcefully learn something that they didn’t want to learn. On the other hand, STEAM education integrates the four major subjects with “Arts” and creates an ideal educational curriculum. Kids learn everything with interest and have many careers to choose from, compared to STEM.
Importance of STEAM Education
STEAM education is an ideal curriculum for kids to develop the skills needed to make them stand out when entering their professional lives. The first thing that STEAM students learn is problem-solving skills and critical thinking. When they experience a productive and interesting problem, they start thinking out of the box to find the best solution. And this is all STEAM education great focus on. If a child knew how to face and solve everyday problems, then solving problems in their professional life would not be a problem.
STEAM and Problem-Solving Skills
No matter which subjects you talk about, problem-solving is always going to be the key factor. You can take math or science as an example. Without solving small and major problems during an experiment, it will be really hard to make new inventions. In math, everyone knows how students find the solution by solving the problem at hand, step by step. Suppose we talk about other subjects like engineering, then problem-solving becomes the foothold that improves your understanding of the subject. That is why STEAM education helps children develop problem-solving skills. With the integration of five major subjects, students become efficient at solving whatever problem they face.
Teaching Problem-Solving Skills to Your Child
There are a few methods that STEAM education follows to help children develop problem-solving skills. With the help of various activities, assignments, STEAM students learn about critical thinking. They then develop a set of minds ideal for problem-solving. That is why STEAM students perform well, both in their private and professional lives.
We previously wrote an article on – STEAM Education, a Guide for Parents. Click here to find out more how STEAM Education can benefit your child.
Independency
Problem-solving skills are important for children to make them understand what decisions are healthy for them. When children get followed around and made to depend too much on parents and teachers, it is hard for them to develop certain skills. That is why STEAM education makes kids independent. They make their choice for themselves in classrooms and at playgrounds. It gives them a chance to make the needed mistakes to earn experience. By giving kids, much space doesn’t mean that the teachers neglect them. They watch over them while the kids use their thinking to get out of the problem they are facing.
Creativity
Creativity is the only thing that makes STEAM education different from STEM. Although STEM students learn a lot about the four major subjects, they still lack when it comes to creativity. However, in STEAM education, arts represent creativity and broad thinking. It helps students understand that solving everything is good, but it is sometimes better to look at the bigger picture. Scientists sometimes get stuck because they focus too much on solving small problems. To the point that they forget about what they were looking for in the first place. STEAM education uses creative methods to teach students that solving a problem is sometimes the simplest way forward.
Giving them Hard Problems
It is best to face problems that are hard but not unsolvable to make children understand problem-solving. It makes children think deeply about the best way to approach the problem. When they get into the complex step, they become more interested and try harder to find the solution. STEAM teachers give hard problems to solve to learn that using textbook methods to solve every problem is not possible.
One Problem – Various Solutions
Giving kids a choice of multiple solutions raises their interest and helps them advance their critical thinking. STEAM education provides students with various solutions for a single problem. Though every solution is right doesn’t mean every solution is efficient. It falls on the students to find out what is the ideal solution. While facing such a situation, students are sure to develop great problem-solving skills.
Fail and Improve
Failing at something is the only way to make improvements. When kids fail at their tasks, they don’t feel dejected; they try again until they succeed; this is what STEAM education teaches its students. Teachers give students extra hard problems that they know their students can’t solve. This way, the students get a taste of failure. But then they move forward and expand their thinking to the point when they reach the solution. It helps them broaden their senses and critical thinking.
Basic Problem-Solving Skills
STEAM Education uses basic problem-solving steps to teach students how to determine the problem and develop the ideal solution. Until they know what the problem at hand is, how can they solve it. After that, they move towards defining the problem and tracing its origin. When this step is complete, they use visual arts to understand the problem better. After that, the breakdown of the problem in smaller parts. At last, after solving every smaller portion, they find the solution they want.
Conclusion
STEAM education takes it on itself to prepare children for whatever they face in their professional and personal life. If you want your kids to solve every problem they face, then STEAM education is the best way to make your kids learn about problem-solving. Children carry a natural curiosity and take an interest in everything that is not forced. STEAM education uses a gentle yet effective approach while teaching students. They learn everything with interest and keep making progress.
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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