Reframing the role of creativity in STEAM for Mathematics learning: insights from two projects Taxonomies and LabSTEM

Despite years of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) research, the same mathematics learning issues persist in primary/secondary schools (Kjeldsen et al., 2024):
• Most STEAM [Arts included] research on playful learning/gamification emphasizes motivation over formal knowledge acquisition (Jaramillo-Mediavilla. et al. 2024).
• The roles and positioning of mathematics are often diminished within the increased STEM framework (English, 2016).
As a result, it is hard for mathematics teachers to see the advantages of including creativity, play or even arts in the learning mathematics.
This can have different implications:
• Negative effect: Mathematics teachers may withdraw from supporting interdisciplinary STEM research, limiting the exploration of creative pedagogies.
• Positive effect: Traditional pedagogical methods could be revisited and still add value in contemporary teaching.
Data from the two project LabSTEM and Taxonomies shows a need to reframe creativity in STEM/STEAM projects and teachers need to experience how creative approaches contribute to learning. The projects include observations of six STEM classes and interviews with 12 teachers.
Hence we ask the following questions: How can we construct a shared platforms for investigating the role of creativity in mathematics education?
We propose a feedback and retrofitting model for creative STEM education where:
• Creativity should not move out of the formal, but rather strengthen the grounding for formal scientific and mathematical knowledge (Larsen & Chunfang, in review).
• Creative tasks should foster needs for and understanding of the formal knowledge from the pupils’ perspective, leading to revising learning material and formulating goal-oriented questions to teachers (Marchetti et al., 2023).
• Requirements for formal knowledge are reframed as requirements for a creative task to be fulfilled (Larsen & Svendsen, in review)
More schools engaged in creative experimentation once teachers participated and saw useful results. We advocate for experience-based approaches that create a negotiation-space with teachers to explore innovative, need-based pedagogies.