Research project STEAM in early childhood education
An opportunity to traverse gender norms connected to Arts and STEM?
Project description
This project concerns STEAM education, that is, STEM(science, technology, engineering, mathematics) combined with Arts (dance, drama, music, visual arts). The purpose is to explore if and how STEAM education can make way for children to engage with STEM and Arts beyond gender norms in Early Childhood Education (ECE). Research has shown that boys have a more narrow space for being and learning in Arts, and girls have a more narrow space for being and learning in STEM. We anticipate that combining Arts and STEM can open up norm-challenging ways of teaching and learning. The aim of the project is to generate knowledge about how STEAM teaching in ECE can traverse gender norms connected to Arts and STEM. The project uses a practice based methodology, informed by a sociomaterial stance. Two teams, each including four-six preschool teachers and two researchers, will explore gender aware STEAM teaching in preschool practice. The main data is recordings from team meetings (audio/video, notes) and from researchers’ visits in practice (video, photo, field notes). We apply a diffractive analysis on our data, guided by sociomaterial understandings of learning and gendering. The STEAM teaching is implemented in 2023 and 2024. In 2025 and 2026, we analyse data and disseminate the results. The project is important since it contributes to making Arts, STEM and STEAM more accessible to children, regardless of gender, and to fostering transdisciplinary problem-solvers needed in the future.
Project members
Project managers
Anna Günther-Hanssen
Universitetslektor
Members
Sofie Areljung
Docent
Anna Lindqvist
Universitetslektor
Lena O Magnusson
Universitetslektor
