Educators are exploring a new wrinkle to traditional STEM teaching – adding an “A” for the arts into the mix to create STEAM.
For example, biology students at the Dayton Regional STEM School recently combined microscopes with water colors in a special project to study cells.
“Teaching about cells is always difficult,” explains Kate Cook, the school’s life sciences teacher. “I wanted to help my students understand how cells really look and how their structures relate to their function.”
Cook contacted Jenny Montgomery, the school’s art teacher, to explore the possibility of integrating art into a science project. “What we came up with was the idea of having each student explore a different cell and then create a water color of that cell, along with a written explanation of its function,” says Cook. Cook and Montgomery teamed up to teach the project.
Students first looked at different microscopic depictions of cells in biology class. “Then we introduced the art element,” Montgomery notes. “We looked at the work of contemporary artists who have made paintings inspired by cells. Students were able to identify scientific structures they had been studying, as well as respond to the artistic choices that artists made in rendering the cells.”
According to Montgomery, the interchange between identifying the scientific component of the cells and how the artists interpreted them was a very fluid.
The project enabled the students to experience how artists and scientists have common methodologies in observing the world around them, she noted. “I think both artists and scientists start with curiosity and investigation and inquiry,” says Montgomery. “Artists explore and reflect on things in depth and create a body of work. Scientists do the same thing and conduct a series of experiments.”
Cook adds that scientists also participate in peer critique and re-evaluation. “We asked the students to do this as well by developing portfolios to demonstrate their understanding of the project and then present their work to their peers and community and business partners.”
By successfully engaging their students in interpreting scientific information through the artistic process, Cook and Montgomery have demonstrated that art can have an important impact at Dayton Regional STEM School.