How to Develop a STEAM Education Curriculum
Author: Manuel R. CortezRodas
Beginning and Ending
Determine where the curriculum will begin, and where it will end. Setting these two boundaries establishes a set limit for the curriculum. These two boundaries can be from Kindergarten to 12th grade, from age 6 to age 18, even from Pre-Kindergarten to Post Secondary School. Determining the beginning and the ending for you curriculum sets a point of origin from where the curriculum pathway will start, until the curriculum is successfully finished by the student.
Objectives
What do you want the student to achieve? will they all be college ready? will they be workplace ready? will they be able to achieve success in both college and the workplace after they have completed the required list of courses, classes, and subject material in the STEAM Curriculum? These are some of the objectives that must be discussed and stated clearly. It must also be planned where along the path of the curriculum these objectives must be met.
Pathways
Although the overall pathway of the STEAM Education Curriculum should be from beginning to ending, it must be taken into consideration that having only one path may cause delays and gridlock if it cannot accommodate all students. Therefore it is recommended that the curriculum be composed of many different pathways (as many as needed by the students) to allow for the free flow of growth and development. It should also be taken into consideration that there can be students who may join the STEAM curriculum at later times and at different stages in the development, as well as students who may need to be withdrawn when the need arises.
Success
Will success be measured by the number of students who complete the whole curriculum from beginning to end, or will it be measured by the number of students who reach only the ending stage of the process? Perhaps the overall measure of success should be by the solutions that students reach to our present problems and the ones they will face. If this last is to be the measure of success, the we must take into account that it will take time (in some cases many years) before any measure of success is obtained.
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