How STEAM education at Northbridge develops technically literate young men and women

The main purpose of incorporating and prioritising STEAM in education is in order to develop technically and scientifically literate young men and women who are able to think creatively in order to solve problems, and adapt to their dynamic and changing society as they enter the workforce.

There are four main ways that we at NISC recognise that STEAM improves learning outcomes:

1. Increasing content relevance

By providing learning opportunities that include all (or most) of the STEAM elements, we are able to more closely mimic how students are likely to encounter them in later life. This strengthens the mental pathways that connect these subjects so that students will be better equipped to understand and problem-solve situations in the future. 

2. Engaging a greater diversity of learners

Unfortunately students can become alienated from specific subjects, struggling to maintain interest and falling behind. However, learning experiences that combine multiple subjects such as STEAM can provide more avenues for learners to develop a new interest or re-engage with a subject.

3. Building creative problem solving and design skills

The most sought-after skills in the workplaces of the future will be problem-solving and creativity. These skills are fundamentally a blend between artistic thinking and scientific thinking. Artistic thinking enables the identification of many approaches to a problem and connecting disparate elements. Scientific thinking focuses on analysing and experimenting. STEAM brings these together and helps develop competencies that will be valuable life skills for our students.

4. Improve content mastery

While each element on this list is valuable in itself, they also work together to increase students’ content mastery. In other words, their testable outcomes will improve. This is a result of engaging more learners, increasing content relevance, and developing problem solving skills.

In sum, this is why we love STEAM at NISC, and the able young men and women that learning such as this helps produce.