Case Studies on the Transfer of Knowledge within the interdisciplinary STEAM curricula construct

Abstract

Sharing anecdotal case study research documents the vibrancy of personal communication to reveal both spontaneous reactions and profound thinking on the transfer of knowledge in the interdisciplinary STEAM curricula construct. With the growing research and attention to arts-integration and STEAM curricula development, a critical assignment in a graduate course in Arts-integration: Interactive Strategies for (STEAM) teaching and learning required the in-service teachers, who were the students in the course, to be teacher/researchers. In a two-to-three page case study, the students documented evidence of one or two K-12 students’ transfer of knowledge between two or more disciplines – science, technology, engineering, math, and the visual arts. The methodology to execute the case study varied among the in-service teachers from surveys to one-on-one interviews to collaborations among teachers. One of the challenges of the assignment, except for a student in a STEAM school, was to investigate an educational initiative that was not actually a part of the design of the classroom or school.