Road-STEAMer

Scope

The overall aim of the project was to develop a STEAM roadmap for science education in Horizon Europe, i.e. a plan of action that will provide guidance to EU's key funding programme for research and innovation on how to encourage more interest in STEM through the use of artistic approaches, involving creative thinking and applied arts (the “A” in ‘STEAM’).

The consortium aimed to provide Europe with this roadmap, through:

• Collaboration and co-creation with the stakeholder communities of science education, research, innovation and creativity, through intensive exchange, dialogue and mutual learning among them which will produce better knowledge and shared understandings of the relevant opportunities, challenges and needs.
• A bottom-up approach emphasising educational practice and practitioners’ agency rather than high-level conceptualisations of STEAM and generic top-down plans (in reality often just vague statements of intention) for its adoption in science education.
• A specific focus on ways to leverage the power of STEAM approaches, as manifested through exemplary cases and best practices, so as to enable a bridging of open science and open schooling which can catalyse an increased impact for science education as a crucial tool for addressing Europe’s current scientific and societal challenges.

The originality of Road-STEAMer resides in its overall approach to the development of the STEAM roadmap that triangulated the knowledge gained from the stakeholder engagement and the analysis of the STEAM practices with the knowledge produced from the analysis of the current educational policies, contexts and frameworks.