The SPACE project brought innovative existing approaches designed to provide Europe's future educators with the tools they need in order to exemplify how tomorrow's innovators act, interact, think, network, and teach. The project grew from past European projects and collaborations involving the project partner organisations.
The SPACE project exists at the meeting point of science, technology, art, entrepreneurship and innovation. Based on different approaches to STEAM Education, including the "Write a Science Opera (WASO)" approach, the SPACE project extended the limits of current models, encompassing additional fields of learning and knowledge.
The project’s main objective was to establish an international student-run entrepreneurial organization. The result was a network of student teachers trained in the delivery of innovative cross-disciplinary art and science educational models to primary students. The project connected to a number of organisations and initiatives including the European Space Agency’s Technology Center (ESTEC), the Global Science Opera and AP Hogeschule's International STEAM week.
STEAM was developed in 2006 by Georgette Yakman, who then was a master’s graduated student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s Integrated Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics Educational program (ISTEMed). Since then she has continued to evolve the concept by including more research and practice on the topic. She has used STEAM with significant results as a full-time middle-school and high-school teacher and educational consultant.
Visit Georgette Yakman's website to find out more about how she created STEAM.
STEAM is a way to take the benefits of STEM and complete the package by integrating these principles in and through the arts. STEAM takes STEM to the next level: it allows students to connect their learning in these critical areas together with arts practices, elements, design principles, and standards to provide the whole pallet of learning at their disposal. STEAM removes limitations and replaces them with wonder, critique, inquiry, and innovation.