Often overlooked, art within STEM learning creates new ways of thinking and innovation. STEAM learning not only establishes new founded interest in knowledge, but also cultivates valuable creative thinking within theoretical principles. Through artistic skills and thinking, students can use this mindset to understand difficult-to-grasp STEM problems. Overlooking STEAM takes away different technical thinking skills, and takes away the ability to learn communication skills, and collaboration. “Imagination is critical to innovation and learning”, Dr. Murray Hunter of the University of Malaysia Perlis explains that imagination is, “in part, about filling in gaps in our knowledge”.
Here are four different types of Artistic Thinking that can help students within STEM.
- Effectuative Imagination: triggered by random thoughts or memories it helps combine information together to create new ideas.
- Intellectual (or Constructive) Imagination: the ability to perceive what could be and create hypotheses and other critical thinking based on different pieces of information.
- Strategic Imagination: ‘what could be’, recognizing thoughts by turning them into mental scenarios.
- Memory Reconstruction: memory recall, retrieving memories by various cognitive processes including perception, imagination, motivation, amongst others.
Whether intentionally or not, STEM students use Artistic Thinking daily to recall and create answers in cognitive and technical problem solving. These are just a few types of imagination that are used repeatedly in STEAM learning, and can show the benefits of using imagination in the classroom.
Check out some of the ways Douglas Stewart brings imagination into learning:
How do you bring creativity into the classroom?
Resources
https://www.techlearning.com/news/6-tools-and-apps-for-fostering-student-creativity
https://www.cypherlearning.com/blog/k-20/stem-vs-steam-the-importance-of-the-arts
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