STEAM Educators Embracing the Arts to Develop Students’ Capabilities for Resolving Global Sustainability Crises

Abstract

We are currently experiencing an era – the Anthropocene – that is unprecedented in the history of our planet. Our addiction to fossil fuels and powerful technologies has dangerously altered the Earth’s natural systems, giving rise to the well-documented global crises of climate change, plastic pollution of the oceans, and tragic loss of biocultural diversity. These crises have created a unique challenge for STEM educators, given that STEM disciplinary knowledge and skills are often viewed as the key to solving the world’s economic and environmental problems. This popular view tends to focus narrowly, however, on students learning objectively about the world out there. Such a restrictive view largely ignores the crucial role education can and should (ethically) play in developing students’ attitudes and values - their inner worlds - that fuel their moral agency for living and working in sustainable ways. Across the world transformative STEM educators are embracing Arts-based methods to prepare young people with special capabilities and values for actively contributing to the sustainable development of a world in crisis. Examples of these innovative approaches are featured in Transformative STEAM Education For Sustainable Development (Taylor & Taylor, 2022).