Brain-STEM: Using Interdisciplinarity to Improve Our Minds and Our Schools

Over the next two years, American schools will be implementing four major educational reforms: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English/Language Arts, the CCSS for Mathematics, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the 21st Century Skills. Implementing such massive changes in four consecutive years would be difficult enough. Introducing three content-related reforms simultaneously is unprecedented.

To break this down, educational consultants propose to think of the curricular focus as two different conceptual “umbrellas.” Rather than restrict math class to math, think of math as just part of the STEM umbrella, where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics merge as the instructional centerpiece, softening the lines of disciplinary demarcation among these four academic disciplines. Under a second model, we re-frame the STEM conversation by expanding it into ST2REAM, which includes a “T,” an “R,” and an “A.” The second “T” represents thematic instruction (e.g., project-based learning). The “R” denotes reading/language arts (where reading, writing, dialogue, and discourse serve as the tools accelerating STEM learning), while the “A” is for art, since the sciences and engineering cannot be taught without understanding illustrations, as well as two- and three-dimensional modeling.

Scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other STEM professionals spend a substantial portion of their typical day applying skills and concepts that fall outside the traditional boundaries of their discipline. The National Research Center concluded in 2011 that reading and writing comprises over half of the work of scientists and engineers. Speaking, listening, reading, writing, computing, sketching, and collaborating with others makes up the average day of most STEM professionals, where we use interdisciplinary competencies on an as-needed basis throughout the day. By completing the chart below, we are reminded of the natural interdisciplinarity of these careers.

Research indicates that approximately 13 percent of all students are auditory learners, suggesting that most schools are likely not meeting the learning needs of 87 percent of our students with lectures. In the STEM learning model, solving a real world problem serves as the vehicle for connected learning rather than a textbook designed for one discipline.

Willard Daggett identified the levels of academic content applications that prepare students for the future world as:

1. Knowledge in one discipline.
2. Application within one discipline.
3. Application across disciplines.
4. Application to real-world predictable situations.
5. Application to real-world unpredictable situations.

Daily, teachers hear, “When will I ever use this?” Under our STEM model (or umbrella), students actively apply the content, which makes why it is important to know such content obvious to them. These “aha” moments not only help students understand the advantage of an interconnected curriculum (reflecting a connected real world), but they also provide them with multiple access routes for understanding. Taking ownership for developing one’s personal knowledge becomes a treasure that students retain for a lifetime.

Parents and teachers should learn to recognize “where the STEM is” in what they already teach in class, do at home, or experience during the day. Nearly every aspect of our lives has a STEM element to it. Whether children are riding a car, train, bike, or bus, countless STEM elements are playing a crucial role in making it possible, which should be identified and discussed. Each building we enter came by way of combining multiple STEM/ST2REAM fields, including art and design. Whether we are consumed by emails or productive desk work, or just “surfing the net,” computer technology and STEM made that experience possible. Well-trained creative STEM workers were behind it all. In the computer-dependent, technology-driven Western world, there is hardly a moment in our entire day that is truly “STEM-free.”

Here is an enjoyable STEM learning activity for families. Take a traditional storybook that presents a problem. Ask students to “engineer” a different (preferably better) solution to the problem in the story. For example, you have received an urgent e-mail message from the Three Little Pigs. They have been traumatized long enough by the Big Bad Wolf! Your family/class has been commissioned by the Three Little Pigs to engineer two safeguards to thwart the Big Bad Wolf. How many design and engineering models can you propose as solutions to the Three Little Pigs’ problem? Depending on age, students can provide a diagram and a written description of their STEM-based solution.

1. Design a new house for the Three Little Pigs with an aluminum rooftop (a materials engineering solution).
2. Replace the chimney with a central-heating system (a solution from building services engineering).
3. Wolves are afraid of snakes, so place a snake pit around the house (agricultural engineering).
4. Build a solar-powered environmentally-friendly fan that blows air away from the new house. When the wolf blows air towards the house, the fan will blow the air back towards the wolf (applied engineering).
5. Build a house with a 35-degree angle rooftop making it too steep to climb (architectural engineering).
6. Wolves are afraid of water, so install a motion-sensitive automatic water sprinkling system (mechanical engineering).
7. Recognizing the Big Bad Wolf’s fear, build a houseboat ten yards from the shore (structural engineering and environmental engineering) with a retractable bridge, of course.