STEAM Education in Music: Research, Teaching Design and Resources

LITERATURE REVIEW
• John-Steiner suggests that ‘Sustained mutually beneficial collaboration provides a mirror to
an individual, broadening his or her self-knowledge, which is crucial to creativity’
(Barrett, 2006).
• Collaborative music-making enables students to learn from the differences through the
creative process (Saether, 2013).
• Considering that our modern educational system has labelled artificial disciplinary boundaries
between arts, science and math, the concept of STEAM is a modern throwback to the notion
of educating the ‘whole child’ (Connelly, 2012) for creative expression in multiple media
(Buonincontro, 2018).
• As translational disciplines that bridge the generation of new knowledge and its application,
art and design would contribute to innovation and economic competitiveness in the manner
that STEM fields had accomplished in the past. (Allina, 2018)
• Instrument making is frequently excluded from the process of music making, especially
in this technological era. In fact, music making should not be limited to performing and
creating. Designing an electronic instrument is aligned with the composer’s creative intention
(Matsunobu, 2012).
METHODOLOGY
The project is a descriptive research to investigate collaborative music-making through STEAM
initiated activities. The data of this research were collected through:
• Focus group interviews of three groups of students. The objectives were
o To gather the information on students’ music profile
o To understand the experiences of the STEAM initiative
o To understand whether the authentic project provides a collaborative
learning environment for creative music-making
• Students’ group creative music projects over four weeks were documented
• Students’ interviews and reflections were transcribed and analysed through thematic coding
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