KEY TAKEAWAYS
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An experimental learning setting integrated within a professional work environment develops self-regulated students who pursue their passions while gaining competencies in STEM disciplines. The students' proximity to designers reinforces the design thinking approach to problem solving and innovation — skills that are essential for the 21st-century economy.
The difference of working in a professional office is huge . . . you can feel it when you walk in. The kids get it and they really step up their game!
— Laine Eichenlab, STEAM Studio Learning Coach
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STEAM Studio offers a blank slate for all types of learners, including those who don't thrive within traditional learning models or may be stigmatized at their home schools. It is a place to create, fail, experiment, and take risks.
We have a very smart student who was failing. At STEAM Studio, this student is excelling! He is a leader for the first time, helping his fellow students. All it took was an environment that catered to his learning style.
— Principal, STEAM Studio Partner School
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STEAM Studio provides Gould Evans an opportunity to live a day-in-the-life of an educator, increasing our empathy for teachers and better understanding how to design learning environments that optimize classroom management while promoting creative freedom.
Gould Evans' STEAM Studio is a proven model that bridges education and work, and helps students chart a path from playground to workplace. The following tenets have made this program successful:
A License to Explore, Create, and Fail
Considering that many students are developing predispositions for their future career choices as early as middle school — often encouraged by schools, parents, and society — it is important that STEAM communicates possibilities of future career paths that are actually fun. Very few middle school students want to grow up to work in a cubicle, yet this is often the perception of STEM careers for these impressionable youth.
Students in Residence with Architects
The chance for students to learn among architects has been an exciting foundation for the program. A creative learning environment like this naturally showcases the architects' creative processes in action every day. Students begin to emulate the professionals, and understand that whatever messages were delivered at school about following instructions and coloring within the lines are not necessarily the path to a successful professional career.
Watching architects at work, students see that in the world of creative ideas, not even adults all agree on the best solution to a problem. There is value in seeing that the teacher does not always hold the answer, and, in fact, that many times there is not one right answer, simply different ways to approach the solution to a problem.
Partnerships
Projects within STEAM Studio have included partnerships with multiple departments at Rockhurst University and University of Missouri at Kansas City. The Go-Baby-Go project benefited from college students in the Engineering Department, Physical Therapy Department, and Department of Education to collaborate with middle school students to custom modify electric cars for youth with mobility limitations. Similarly, a collaborative project with Enabling the Future, brought together a similar set of multidisciplinary partners.
These projects evoked incredible passions for learning as the middle school students recognized the authenticity and compassion involved with the end product. These projects naturally provided a powerful “Why” – giving purpose to the students that worked on them. Having a “Why” is essential to unlocking intrinsic motivation in learners of any age.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking embodies the same skillsets and core competencies that employers state as the most critical attributes for new hires. It has proven correlations with the orders of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Students regularly reach the highest order – creativity in the application of newly acquired knowledge – when using the Design Thinking method.
Lifelong Learning Skills
Design Thinking has been evidenced through research to enhance metacognitive skills and develop self-regulated learners. Effectively, this means students are learning how to be better learners, how to independently manage their learning and work through challenges, and develop a curiosity for learning that will be essential throughout their working lives.
Corporate Environments Supporting Third-Party Education Programs
Bringing education to the workplace helps students see relevance in what they’re learning. Use of workspace for learning helps mitigate the demand for more square footage in schools and puts corporate workspace to higher utilization. Encouraging students to learn and explore in a new environment allows them to shed sometimes harmful and limiting stigmas and labels carried within their home schools.
Learn more in Unleashing Creative Genius: STEAM Studio's Impact on Learning or by visiting steam-studio.com.
