What are STEAM proponents thinking? on creativity, excellence, and measurement

Paul Woodford

Authors

Paul Woodford Western University, Canadá.

Keywords:

STEAM, Democracy, Measurement, Creativity, Neoliberalism

Abstract

Music and art educators worry that neoliberal education reform has rendered their educational programs more vulnerable to declining enrolments and possible eventual elimination from schools and universities. This is in part owing to the linkage of neoliberal education with the knowledge economy and associated assessment practices based on numerical measurement that relegate the arts and humanities to the periphery of education. In response to these developments, some teachers have sought to strengthen the perceived social status and security of their programs by aligning them with the STEM curriculum. Hence the acronym STEAM including Arts. This paper, however, presents an argument that the arts in the STEAM curriculum remain only secondary to the STEM subjects because primarily conceived as means of helping to improve STEM outcomes. Moreover, by catering to the STEM curriculum, those teachers may be stripping the arts of many of their social and communicative competences that, as philosopher John Dewey (1934) contended, made the arts important modes of political thought and action that afforded opportunities for the reconstruction and revitalization of democratic society.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Paul Woodford, Western University, Canadá.

Professor Dr. do Departamento de Educação Musical da Don Wright Faculty of Music, Western University, Londres, Ontário.

References

ADORNO, T. W. Education after Auschwitz. In: SCHREIER, H.; HEYL, M. (ed.). Never again! The Holocaust’s challenge for educators. Hamburg: Kramer, 1997.

ALLINA, B. The development of STEAM educational policy to promote student creativity. Arts Education Policy Review, v. 119, n. 2, p. 77-87, 2018. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2017.1296392. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

ARÓSTEGUI, J. L. Evaluation, educational policy reforms, and their implications for arts education. Arts Education Policy Review, v. 120, n. 3, p. 121-125, 2019. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2018.1532368. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

BALL, S. J. Global education Inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Abindgdon: Routledge, 2012.

BELLOW, S. Reflections on Alexis de Tocqueville: A seminar at the University of

Chicago. In: TAYLOR, B. (ed.). Saul Bellow: there is simply too much to think about. New York: Penguin Books, 2015. p. 330-337.

CARTER, L. Neoliberalism and STEM education. Journal for Activist Science & Technology Education, v. 7, n. 1, p. 32-41, 2016. Available from: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/jaste/article/view/26825. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

CHOMSKY, N. The manufacture of consent. In: PECK, J. (ed.). The Chomsky reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. p. 121-136.

COLWELL, R. J. Policy and assessment. Arts Education Policy Review, v. 120, n. 3, p. 126-139, 2019. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2018.1533502. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

COMPTON, J. The promethean university unbound. Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Bulletin, v. 66, n. 3, p. 5, 2019.

CROSBY, A. W. The measure of reality: quantification and western society, 1250-1600. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

DERESIEWICZ, W. The neoliberal arts: How college sold its soul to the market. Harper’s Magazine, v. 331, n. 8, p. 25-32, 2015. Available from: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/the-neoliberal-arts/. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

DEWEY, J. The public and its problems: an essay in political inquiry. Chicago: Gateway Books, 1927-1946.

DEWEY, J. How we think. In: RATNER, J. (ed.). Intelligence in the world: John Dewey’s philosophy. New York: Random House, 1933-1939.

DEWEY, J. Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books, 1934.

DOHERTY, T. Editorial. Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Bulletin, v. 63, n. 4, p. 1, 2016. Available from: www.caut.ca/bulletin/articles/2016/04/academic-freedom-at-risk-asshared-governance-is-undermined. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

EISNER, E. The celebration of thinking. Education Horizons, v. 66, n. 1, p. 24-29, 1987. Available from: http://www.tcrecord.org. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

FAUTLEY, M. The implications of evaluation and educational policy reform on English

secondary school music education. Arts Education Policy Review, v. 120, n. 3, p. 140-148, 2019. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2018.1532369. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

FLEW, T. Michel Foucault’s the birth of biopolitics and contemporary neoliberalism debates. Paper presented to the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2010.

GEE, J. P.; HULL, G.; LANKSHEAR, C. The new world order behind the language of the new capitalism. Sydney, AU: Allen & Unwin, 1996.

HOWARD, V. A. Must music education have an aim? In: BOWMAN, W. D.; FREGA, A. L. (Eds.). The Oxford handbook of philosophy of music education. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 249-262.

KATZ-BUONINCONTRO, J. Gathering STE(A)M: Policy, curricular, and programmatic developments in arts-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Arts Education Policy Review: STEAM Focus, v. 119, n. 2, p. 73-76, 2018.

LORENZ, C. If you’re so smart, why are you under surveillance? Universities, neoliberalism, and new public management. Critical Inquiry, v. 38, n. 3, p. 599-629, 2012. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1086/664553. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

MCLUHAN, M. Understanding media: the extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

MINTZBERG, H. If you can’t measure it, you’d better manage it. [Blog TWOG]. May 28, 2015. Available from: https://mintzberg.org/blog/measure-it-manage-it. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

O’MALLEY, J. P. The warning signs of a failing democracy: Turkish journalist’s book looks into what is behind the rise of the global populist right. Globe and Mail, March 9, 2019. p. R15.

PETERS, R. S. Must an educator have an aim? In: PETERS, R. S. Authority, responsibility, and education. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959. p. 83-95.

PETERS, R. S. What is an educational process? In: PETERS, R. S. (ed.). The concept of education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. p. 1-12.

SAHLBERG, P. How GERM is infecting schools around the world. [Pasisahlberg.com]. sept. 30, 2012. Available from: https://pasisahlberg.com/text-test/. Cited: Dec. 15, 2021.

TEMELKURAN, E. How to lose a country: the seven steps toward democracy. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019.

WELSH, J. The return of history: conflict, migration, and geopolitics in the twenty-first century. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2016.

WEST, C. Democracy matters: winning the fight against imperialism. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

WESTHEIMER, J. What did you learn in school today? Music, education, democracy, andsocial justice. In:

BENEDICT, C.; SPRUCE; G., SCHMIDT, P.; WOODFORD, P. (Eds.). The Oxford handbook of social justice in music education. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 107-115.

WHITAKER, R. [Review of the book Dissident knowledge in higher education, M. Spooner & J. McNinch, (ed.)].

CAUT Bulletin (Canadian Association of University Teachers), v. 66, n. 3, p. 7, 2019.

WOODFORD, P. Democracy and music education: Liberalism, ethics and the politics of practice. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press, 2005.

WOODFORD, P. Democratic elitism or democratic citizenship: The politics of music, meaning and education in Cold-War America. Eufonia: Didactica de la Musica, v. 50, p. 23-33, 2010.

WOODFORD, P. Music education and social justice: Toward a radical political history and vision. In: SPRUCE, G.; PHILPOT, C. (ed.). Debates in music education. London: Routledge, 2012. p. 85-101.

WOODFORD, P. Music education in an age of virtuality and post-truth. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019.

YEATS, W. B. Sailing to Byzantium. In: FINNERMAN, R. J. (ed.). The poems of W. B. Yeats: A new edition. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1933. p. 193.