STEAM Update STEAM Learning takes hold at BHS W
of the new Innovation Centre at BHS, a more subtle, but equally important, STEAM development is also taking place at the School.
hile attention has been focused on the funding, design and build
In 2016, BHS engaged the Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM (TIES) to develop a comprehensive strategy to prepare the School’s teachers to utilise the Innovation Centre for STEAM pedagogy. For the last two years, TIES consultant, Julie Hasfjord, has been on campus working directly with the staff to achieve this goal. Ms Hasfjord, who has helped institute STEAM in schools all over the world, delivered the strategy for BHS in June and spoke to Torchbearer about the some of its key features and how STEAM will impact learning across the School. Perhaps the defining characteristic of STEAM education is that it is not a subject, or even a group of subjects, instead it is a specific approach to teaching and learning.
“I like to tell teachers that STEAM is not one more thing on your plate, STEAM is the plate,” says Ms Hasfjord. “Its a way of
Hand-on Excellence: As part of the School’s implementation of the STEAM Strategy, Primary students have been engaged in school work that builds their collaborative and problem-solving skills.
teaching, an approach.”
Some of the key components to that approach are developing collaboration and problem solving skills and connecting the subject areas in a purposeful way that
Back to School: BHS staff have also been hard at work developing the skills and knowledge required to deliver STEAM education.
relates to real-world scenarios. Interestingly, a high school experience of Ms Hasfjord’s may best illustrate how subjects are combined for problem solving in a STEAM-based curriculum. Having always been interested in Environmental Science, Ms Hasfjord found herself ahead of the rest of her class, so her teacher arranged for her, and a couple of classmates, to enter a local contest to solve a problem in their community. The task they chose was fixing a polluted river. It turns out the solution lay in rerouting storm drains through a wetland that could safely absorb the pollution. “This was the first time I realised I would be using Algebra in the real-world,” she says. “That was mind-blowing for me. For example, we had to figure out gallons of water versus plant absorption of pollution and I remember thinking, ‘wow, this is what learning is supposed to be!’” Of course, like any academic institution, BHS has established methods and practices for teaching. Shifting them towards STEAM pedagogy and continuing to meet the academic goals of the School is a critical focus of the STEAM strategy. To meet this challenge, Ms Hasfjord has been engaged in a comprehensive and phased process during her two years at the School.
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