"Teaching Natural Sciences from a STEAM Approach: Impact on Creativity and Critical Thinking"

Abstract

The nature of today's education demands the implementation of methodological changes aimed at fostering active classrooms that promote motivation, participation, and the meaningful acquisition of learning. Faced with this challenge, the STEAM approach emerges as a reliable pathway for sparking, sustaining, and solidifying the desire to know, to know how, and to know how to be. This approach is built around a project that serves as a bridge between the student's individual world and academic content, continuously incorporating active methods, collaborative tasks, the use of multiple intelligences, and work on cutting-edge innovation and technology. Thus, we bring together a series of essential aspects for the proper training of students, so they acquire the necessary competence to face any problem or situation successfully, gaining highly valuable knowledge: critical thinking, problem-solving, logical reasoning, foresight, self-awareness, etc.  In this approach, the focus is on the student, and multiple aspects—academic, personal, social, and procedural—are addressed in an integrated manner. The aim is to avoid the manipulation brought about by a 'banking' education that merely stores knowledge, which we eventually forget, and to achieve true student autonomy. This implies reigniting the passion for knowledge, the sense of wonder, engaging in constructive and autonomous activities, and paying genuine attention to diversity.