Creative Learning with Technologies in Young Students’ STEAM Education

Abstract

The STEAM approach combining science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics is a promising method for promoting students’ creative technological competencies, but it has received little research interest in the field of early education. This chapter explores this approach in pre-school and grades 1 and 2 of primary school (ages 6–8), and examines how creative use of technologies is related to various learning areas in young students’ learning projects. We present 13 interdisciplinary projects in which invention pedagogy, a Finnish approach to STEAM education, was implemented. Invention pedagogy emphasizes the learning of twenty-first century competencies through multidisciplinary, creative, technology-enhanced design and creative processes. Three data sets (i.e., teachers’ project plans, descriptions and reflections) and visual representations of the projects, were analyzed with qualitative content analysis and co-occurrence network analysis. The findings indicate that young students are able use various technological activities representing five technological dimensions: crafting, design, engineering, documenting and sharing, and programming. The underlying connections between the activities and implemented learning areas revealed three orientations to STEAM education: the maker orientation, competence orientation, and digital orientation. These orientations represent varying emphases of young students’ STEAM education and suggest new directions for further developing the approach.