STEAM in Childhood Education: analysis of content of the official curriculum

Abstract

The educational approach STEAM bet by sciences (S), technology (T), engineering (E), arts (A) and mathematics (M) of transversal way and interdisciplinary, to transform the teaching-learning processes of education, and promote vocations-technological scientific. The main of this research is to realizer an analysis of the valid legislation that governs the early Chiildhood Education in Galicia, to classify the aims and contents in thematic areas attending to the approach STEAM. For this develops a mixed study, combining the documentary analysis, of content, with the classification of the different aims, and curricular contents from a descriptive perspective. Later, they analyzed the semantic relations inside each discipline, for Know the thematic areas of greater influence. The results show that 43% of the general aims of stage, 61% of area and 71,2% of the contents established to state level are related with STEAM. While, in the autonomic legislation, 56% of the general aims of Childish Education, 74% of area and 78% of the contents are related with said disciplines. These results have a new group of the contents, attending to semantic criteria in 26 new thematic areas, 9 of them in science, 2 in technology, 4 in engineering, 8 in art and 3 in mathematics. In conclusion, it is possible and there is curricular content to design and apply STEAM projects in Early Childhood Education, and also there is little presence of content on technology, engineering and mathematics compared to science and art.