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By Sam Piha
“STEAM Education is an approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking.” – The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM
The “A” was added to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and stands for Arts Integration. We interviewed Sally Baker, CEO of The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM to learn more. Below are some of her responses to our questions.
Q: Do you think that the movement from STEM to STEAM was a positive one for afterschool providers?
A: Absolutely, and here is why. Though closely related, STEM and STEAM approach learning in meaningfully different ways. Both are rooted in problem solving, encourage students to learn through hands-on exploration, and emphasize the interdisciplinary application of knowledge. The distinction, of course, lies in the addition of the "A," which places the arts as an intentional and purposeful part of the problem-solving process rather than a separate subject. That addition changes everything.
The arts invite personal interpretation and expression in a way that pure STEM does not. When students are given creative agency alongside scientific and mathematical thinking, something shifts. STEAM opens up entirely new access points for students who might not see themselves in traditional STEM pathways, and it gives teachers new and powerful ways to reach learners who think, create, and communicate differently.
For afterschool providers specifically, this shift is especially significant. Afterschool spaces have always had the freedom to prioritize engagement, joy, and exploration in ways that the traditional school day sometimes cannot. STEAM fits that environment naturally. It creates room for creative innovation and the kind of culturally responsive problem solving that resonates with students beyond the classroom walls.
The move from STEM to STEAM was not simply the addition of an arts class. It was an invitation to reimagine what learning can look like when creativity is treated as essential rather than supplemental. For afterschool providers, that invitation is one worth accepting wholeheartedly.
Q: What value or advantages did this shift create?
A: The advantages of shifting from STEM to STEAM are multifaceted, and so are the challenges. Both are worth understanding honestly.
On the advantage side, STEAM appeals to a broader and more diverse set of learners. Not every student finds their entry point through science and math. When the arts serve as a launching pad into learning, it creates greater equity in who gets to participate and who sees themselves as a capable problem solver. It also acknowledges something that is simply true: complex problems require collaboration across diverse ways of thinking, and the arts represent one of the most powerful of those ways.
STEAM solutions also tend to have a deeper human impact. The arts are rooted in storytelling, and people are moved and changed through stories in ways that data alone rarely achieves. Consider a water pollution project. A STEM solution might produce a brilliant device that senses and captures pollutants in a local waterway. A STEAM solution might build that same device and pair it with a time-lapsed documentary that tells the story of the water's transformation. The science is equally rigorous, but the story makes people care. It draws in funding, builds community awareness, and connects the issue to the lives of people who might otherwise never have engaged with it.
The honest challenge of STEAM, however, is that it is harder to implement well. For decades, the arts have been treated as supplementary to learning rather than essential to it. As a result, most teachers were never trained in the arts or in arts integration, and effective STEAM educators need to either be willing to bridge those disciplines themselves or know how to reach out to partner teachers, teaching artists, and outside organizations with complementary expertise.
For afterschool providers, finding staff who are equipped and confident to do this work with real intention can be a genuine challenge. But when it happens, and when it is done well, the results are some of the most powerful learning experiences young people can have.
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Q: In your observation of youth programs, what do you think they most often get wrong in the design of STEAM activities?
A: This is an easy one: definition. Most programs miss the fundamental point of what STEAM actually is, and it is not entirely their fault. The term has become so widely used that it has lost much of its meaning. Programming a robot is not STEAM. That is computer science. Conducting a hands-on science experiment is not STEAM. That is hands-on science. Drawing what you have learned in math class is not STEAM. That is drawing.
STEAM is a problem-solving process. It is what happens when students use science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics together to address a real problem: imagining a range of possible solutions, testing them, analyzing data to make improvements, and ultimately presenting their findings to an authentic audience who has a genuine stake in the outcome. That last part matters more than most programs realize. Authentic audience changes everything about how students engage with and invest in their work.
This does not mean every STEAM experience needs to be a lengthy, elaborate project. But unless students are using those integrated disciplines in service of solving a problem, the activity is not truly STEAM, regardless of what it is called.
I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with coding robots, conducting experiments, or drawing mathematical concepts. Those are valuable learning experiences in their own right. The problem arises when we call them STEAM and believe we have done the work of integration. We have not. And in doing so, we miss the extraordinary power that genuine STEAM experiences have to develop creative, collaborative, and innovative thinkers who are equipped to tackle the complex challenges their communities and their world will ask of them.
Q: In your observation of youth programs, what do you think they most often get right in the design of STEAM activities?
A: More than they might realize, actually. Most youth programs have a genuine and intuitive understanding that STEAM should feel different from traditional classroom learning. They know it should be student-driven, hands-on, and engaging, and that instinct is exactly right. When young people are tinkering, building, sculpting, planting, and making something they can call their own, something important is happening, even if the formal framework around it is still developing.
Getting all of the pieces moving together in the right direction is genuinely hard work. But a room full of students who are using both their hands and their minds to explore, collaborate, create, and solve is already on the right track. That energy and engagement is not a small thing. It is actually the foundation that everything else gets built on, and it is something that many more formal educational settings struggle to create at all.
Afterschool programs often underestimate how much that culture of curiosity and making is worth.
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