Significance of Mathematics in STEAM Education

Schools and institutions today are setting up the stage for their students to foster Steam Education in an elaborative form. After witnessing the statistical pitfall in the skilled manpower for the jobs today, Steam education is gaining the required attention.

Though the successful implementation and execution of an integrative study of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics remain a challenge. This ought to be further difficult in developing the right concepts in mathematics.

The main aim of changing the current educational paradigm towards a Steam approach is to establish a reflection of interconnection between the things children study to the world outside the school.

It is difficult to interconnect the real world into the maths problems we solve in the textbooks. However, if we understand the maths is an integral part of almost all the discoveries in the world, the problem will be simplified to various levels. Mathematics lies everywhere, be it shapes, sizes, series, patterns, volumes or any other thing.

If we talk of a traditional school, one lot of the students find maths exciting, magical and thrilling while there is a whole lot who find it to be a bane. The formulas and the numbers seem to appear as monsters making them anxious and confused when it comes to calculations.

The issue has a tendency to emerge when students neglect to comprehend and ace ideas legitimately before moving further towards the advanced levels. The lack of basic fundamentals and concepts in mathematics is something which created a skill gap for the students. Steam education is an initiative to bridge this skill gap.

The Steam education methodologies completely focus upon the conceptualization of mathematics. Correlating a maths problem to the real world is one such effective technique where children can relate to it. Steam education further encourages children to come out with different and unique ways of getting solutions instead of being too directive with the use of a textbook formula. Solving the problem in groups inculcates integrative and engaging process promoting the skills of critical thinking to master maths.

Mathematics can be considered as a language for science, technology, and engineering. In a perfect world, mathematics ought to be given all the more standing and be viewed as an empowering agent or basis for the progression of comprehension of ideas in different orders. It is important that we make a shift from the incidental nature of mathematics to on the instrumental idea of the maths to make it more expressible in Steam education techniques and activities.