How transdisciplinary integration,creativity and student motivation interact in three STEAM projects for gifted education?

STEAM and Gifted Education: Disciplinary Integration, Creativity, and Student Motivation

Curriculum integration is implemented from various methodological perspectives in STEAM education, such as inter- or transdisciplinary (e.g., Liao, 2016). A transdisciplinary approach adapted to gifted education is described by Lage-Gómez and Ros (2021), based on the concept of Big Idea as a thematic axis from which blurring the boundaries between the areas (Chalmers et al., 2017). In this line, the interrelations between the diverse areas might be addressed after elaborating on its specific content(Kelley & Knowles, 2016). So that, the transdisciplinary integration might open new ways of knowing in a process of reconfiguration of the educational space, experiencing real world complex problems(Burnard et al., 2022). For example, Akhan et al. (2022), explored the global problem of climate change with gifted students from an integrated perspective, underlying how students produced critical and creative solutions. As suggested by Little et al. (2007), curriculum integration practices in gifted education increase the conceptual reasoning, critical thinking, and content learning, establishing a framework which favours the student engagement in actively exploring, analysing, and discussing advanced materials and topics. So that, Tucker et al. (1997) considers an integrated-thematic curriculum as appropriate for gifted learners considering their high abilities to establish relationships.

Creativity in STEAM education might be approached from a plural perspective where a series of psychological, behavioural, social, and cultural aspects operate simultaneously (Glaveanu & Beghetto, 2021). Several authors (Burnard & Colucci-Gray, 2020; Costantino, 2018; Quigley et al., 2017) suggest the relationship between creative thinking, creative skills, innovation, and imagination connected to STEAM. This perspective might be applied to gifted education, even more when considering the creativity as one of the defining traits of giftedness, along with high intellectual ability and perseverance to the task (Renzulli, 1999). From the perspective of the interrelationship between teaching for creativity, teaching creatively, and creative learning (Jeffrey & Craft, 2004), and considering creativity not an inherent psychological trait (DeHaan, 2009), STEAM education for the gifted might foster a plural approach to creativity from the diverse areas.

Starting from the conception of intrinsic motivation as a predictor of creative skills and domain knowledge (Amabile, 1996), Conradty and Bogner (2019) quantify creativity in STEAM projects with adolescents, indicating that younger students’ creativity scores are higher than those of older ones, and underlining the importance of creativity as an essential starting point for student motivation, correlating creativity and motivation. In this sense, Bybee (2006) underline the relevance of manipulative and inquiry activities typical in STEAM to enhance student motivation and learning. Dieker et al. (2012) reported the benefits of STEM projects in gifted education in fostering student self-confidence. This is correspondent with the open perspective on cooperative work and its positive effects on collaborating with friends (Shore, 2021). Cho and Lin (2010) correlate intrinsic motivation with the participation in specific programmes for creative problem-solving approach to maths, “the longer they participate in the gifted education program for creative problem solving approach to maths, the higher their intrinsic motivation becomes” (p. 55). In addition, it is important to consider the critical function of family, by enhancing indirectly intrinsic motivation and confidence in intelligence. As suggested by Heller (2007), social learning environments plays an important role in gifted education, emphasising creative environment and experimental possibilities.

There are several propositions in the field of gifted education that allow to address the mentioned three consubstantial aspects of STEAM in school projects. Sternberg (2020) proposes the Augmented Theory of Successful Intelligence. The author underlines the following characteristics:

(1) Carrying out varied kind of activities.

In a similar vein, Wilson (2018) proposes successful characteristics in STEAM activities for gifted education:

(1) Diverse activities, in order to discover individual preferences.

As stated by Shore (2021), research evidence in gifted education from specific practices is needed. In that line, the following research questions are proposed from the framework of STEAM education for gifted students:

(1) What are the key characteristics of the transdisciplinary STEAM projects implemented?

Context and Participants

The participants in the study belong to a specific and public programme for gifted students. They are admitted after a psycho-pedagogical evaluation based on standardised tests of intelligence and creativity by the guidance services of their educational centres and after verifying that they meet the Programme criteria. 16 sessions per year, 3 hours each, take place voluntarily two Saturdays per month. The programme is organised into scientific-technological, humanistic-literary, artistic and social skills areas.

The participants in the study are presented in Table 1. It involved 152 students in 12 groups of 11- and 12-years old (4 groups in each one of the three projects with 8–17 members each), 100% Spanish nationality and mixed by gender. It was run over 3 years, implementing a different STEAM project each year, although they all had the same organisational structure and objectives. The students participating in the projects were different each year. The projects were entitled “Fractals” (2017/18), “Graphs” (2018/19) and “Alice” (2019/20), respectively. The projects were elaborated by a group of five teachers-researchers within the context of the gifted programme: one from Primary Education, two from Secondary Education and two from the university, with expertise in the areas of History, Biology, Music Education and Science and STEM Education, respectively. In addition, three external professionals, experts in the topics involved, and two audio-visual production professionals who have edited a video summary of each project, have also participated. It also involved the collaboration of the coordinator of the educational programme and the students’ families.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Participants in the study.

Participants	Description	Role
Students	152 students (92 male/60 female). 11–12 years old. 12 class groups	Class assistant
		Evaluation of the projects
Teachers	5 teachers, two of them are also researchers	Designers of the projects and the research
Researchers
Programme	1	Supervisor of the programme
Coordinator
Families	2. Volunteers	External evaluation
External experts	3	Collaboration in the activities
		External evaluation

Transdisciplinary STEAM Projects

The three projects started from a Big Idea (the mathematical concepts of Fractals, Graphs and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books) and had a common structure. First, an introductory session was carried out to introduce the topic and present an initial perspective from each area. The following sessions consisted on specific activities to address the humanistic-literary, scientific-technological, artistic, and social skills fields, and the last one implemented transversally. The programme includes a workshop developed by an external professional and an outing both related to the theme of the project. Finally, a final performance is elaborated collaboratively trying to integrate transdisciplinary the different areas. A summary of the contents implemented in the projects is given next (more details and the link to a video-summary could be seen in the Supplementary Appendix 1).

Instruments

In accordance with a mixed research approach, quantitative and qualitative instruments were selected for data collection. The questionnaire (Supplementary Appendix 2) consists of several statements and the student must mark his/her level of agreement in a Likert scale (1 minimum–5 maximum). Before carrying it out, it was explained to the students that they had to evaluate the project as a whole and that there were no right or wrong answers, but that they simply had to be honest. It is divided into three dimensions accordingly to the categories of transdisciplinary integration, motivation, and creativity, with three items each. Items were codified with a letter corresponding to their dimension (I for transdisciplinary integration, M for motivation and C for creativity) and a number. The questionnaire does not seek to measure the improvement of students' knowledge or creativity, but rather to collect their perspective at the end of the project on how it fosters aspects related to the three categories of analysis considered.

The validation of the questionnaire was performed following the process proposed by Escobar Pérez and Cuervo Martínez (2008), so five experts in quantitative research in the educational field assessed each item according to the criteria of clarity, relevance, and coherence. Accordingly, some questions were rephrased. Given the age of the students, the questions were previously explained to them, specifically those referring to the creativity dimension. The questions were compulsory, so the number of answers in each question is equal to the total number of participants (152). The reliability of the questionnaire was measured using Cronbach’s Alpha, obtaining values of 0.67, 0.58 and 0.73 in the dimensions of creativity, transdisciplinary integration, and motivation respectively. Given the small number of items in each dimension, these results can be considered valid (Loewenthal & Lewis, 2018).

The qualitative techniques and instruments were:

• Participant observation carried out by the five teachers and researchers and collected in their class diary through the established categories.

Procedure

The data was coded and triangulated according to the framework of Activity Theory (Engeström, 1999) through Atlas.ti software (Friese, 2021) and the statistical analysis performed with R software (R Core Team, 2018). The observational and narrative analysis from the qualitative data obtained from the teachers’ and researchers’ class diaries and class video recordings, together with the data from the 10 group interviews with student at the end of each project, teachers, as well as the individual interviews with the programme coordinator, families, and participating expert, was analysed in a deductive/inductive procedure following the categories of creativity, motivation and transdisciplinary integration in correspondence with the questionnaire.

Inductive codes were set through the Atlas.ti software from the three established categories (creativity, motivation and transdisciplinary integration). The codes were organised according to the components of the Activity Theory: the subject, being the students who are immersed in a learning process within the educational projects, the object following this theory. The relationship between the subject and the object are mediated by a series of mediating artifacts, in this case centred on STEAM education, together with a series of rules and division of tasks that are established within the framework of a project developed in a community of practice. The subcodes were transdisciplinary integration, big idea, creative action, meaningful experiences, motivation, creative spaces for teaching and learning and diverse roles.

The questionnaire was performed at the end of each project by the students. The quantitative analysis involves descriptive statistics and non-parametric estimators such as the Mann-Whitney U test to check for the existence of significant differences by age and gender, the biserial-rank parameter for its size effect and Spearman’s Rho (r) for the correlation analysis.

Key Elements in the Transdisciplinary STEAM Projects

A series of characteristics that define the transdisciplinary STEAM projects for gifted education are presented. The boundaries between areas are blurred through the big idea perspective, as a student evidenced “all the activities revolved around Alice” (Student 1, group interview 2, 28 November 2020) and crystallized in the final creation, obtaining a holistic perspective of learning, as it was stated by a student: “we have learned to see a thing from different points of view” (Student 2, group interview 2, 28 November 2020). The key role of the final artistic-based performance in the transdisciplinary integration process is stressed by the programme coordinator because “visualising it so graphically makes it easier to understand in depth the content, at least, in the scientific area, which is quite abstract” (Programme coordinator, interview, 30 October 2019). It is also confirmed from teacher’s perspective: “In addition, in those joint sessions, is where they have best integrated that knowledge they have seen from each area, because in those artistic creations they reflected what they had learned in the mathematics or biology sessions, and it was seen in the embroideries they have done.” (Teacher 4, group interview, May 11, 2019). It is possible to infer how transdisciplinary integration favoured a complex approach to knowledge by blurring the boundaries between the diverse areas, as highlighted by one student “we have understood that many things are linked, that there is another world behind the mirror” (Student 3, group interview 1, 28 November 2020). In this sense, a student in the Fractals project stated in a group interview: “we have created fractals, different types of fractals: fractal stories, fractal music, fractal trees, fractal triangles and many more things” (Student 4, group interview, 26 May 2018).

The identification of creativity by the students as a cross-cutting element in all the knowledge areas addressed in the projects has been characteristic of the students' learning processes: “we have created illusions, imaginary worlds and many other things” (Student 5, group interview 1, 28 November 2020). The students have identified creativity as a phenomenon that has allowed them to develop their imagination, as one student pointed out, “we did it by developing our imagination” (Student 6, group interview, 28 November 2020). Through diverse creations they have related and connected the different areas: “in each activity we created something important: we created another reality when developed symmetry, we created a different perception of things, we created illusions. All the activities taught us something important about life” (Student 7, group interview, 28 November 2020).

Creativity was also key in the final artistic products (Figure 1). In this sense, one of the professionals stated: “Leaving it to them has generated a potpourri of colours, of super high connections, they have even brought different painted balls that have brought another different touch that is not simply like the hoops, but with a 3D touch, and the result for me has been quite positive” (External professional, interview, May 11, 2019).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Creation process of the art installation in the Graphs project.

An essential characteristic of the projects is the link to the real world through the diverse activities developed. In this line, different and creative spaces for teaching and learning were used, where students performed a variety of roles, integrating a community of practice with all the participants, including teachers, researchers, and external professionals (see Figure 2). A student underlined the “cooperation between students and groups through fractals” (Student 8, group interview, 26 May 2018), as a key element in the creative processes. Thus, and as one student summarised: “using all areas we have created new things, different spaces, we have seen the world from another perspective and we have learned to cooperate, to imagine strange, new, different things” (Student 9, group interview, 28 November 2020.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Variety of spaces and participants in the activities.

Data triangulation evidenced the importance of student active participation, since most activities focused on cooperative learning. In this line, a student referred to the learning process as “enjoyable, funny, cooperative, but sometimes complicated because there was little time and many things to do” (Student 10, group interview 2, 28 November 2020). Families supported the project and were aware of their children’s interest and motivation. As one parent pointed out in the interview: “You just had to see the students proudly showing their final work and explaining it to their parents” (Parent, interview, 29 October 2019).

Students’ satisfaction was evident throughout the project, an aspect which in turn favoured the motivation and a high level of involvement. In this line, and as stated by a parent: “the eagerness to discover and participate in novel activities that are attractive to them, to face challenges and solve them, makes students come to class motivated, and they leave the classroom more motivated because understanding the world gives them confidence” (Parent, interview, 29 October 2019). In addition, the role of social skills in the teaching and learning processes was emphasised by the teachers, conceiving it as a key element in the project.

The deductive and inductive analysis by using the Activity Theory through Atlas.ti8 software shows and confirms the valuable relation established between transdisciplinary integration, creativity, and student motivation in the connection between a series of factors during the STEAM projects and enhances the significance of learning. All within the framework of a community of practice in which students have assumed a variety of roles in a participatory and motivating process of shared responsibilities in a school socio-cultural framework. This has resulted in the achievement of meaningful learning experiences as a form of creative action across diverse perspectives as an outcome of the transdisciplinary integration projects (Figure 3).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Analysis of the STEAM projects developed through the Activity Theory.

Relationship Between Creativity, Transdisciplinary Integration and Motivation in the Transdisciplinary STEAM Projects

The results of the questionnaire are shown in Figure 4. The percentage of responses with a rating below three is less than 5% and the highest scores (4 or 5) account for more than 80% in all the items. It reveals that students emphasised the creation of novel products (C2) through a variety of roles assumed throughout the projects in the different areas (C1). All this, as underlined by the students, has allowed them to enhance their own capabilities (C3). The results support the choice of a Big Idea to address the different subjects (I1), making connections between the diverse disciplines (I2) and successfully integrating them into the creation of the final product (I3), all of which enhance a meaningful learning. The projects were highly motivating for the students (M1), very stimulating for their transdisciplinary development (M2) and, moreover, they feel that their expectations were met in a very satisfactory way (M3).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Percentage of responses to the questionnaire (1 minimum–5 maximum).

Correlations between the dimensions of the questionnaire were calculated from the median of the items belonging to each dimension for each student. The values are 0.40 between creativity and transdisciplinary integration, 0.54 between creativity and motivation and 0.53 between transdisciplinary integration and motivation. These correlations are statistically significant (p < .001). In the case of our study, this suggests that addressing creativity from diverse disciplines, seeking for connections between areas and integrating knowledge in a final transdisciplinary project encourages a complex understanding of the contents addressed, and fosters students’ perception of their own creativity in a highly motivating and stimulating learning processes. The lower correlation between creativity and transdisciplinary integration is due to some specific items as discussed below.

The degree of correlation between the different items of the questionnaire is also shown in Supplementary Appendix 3 for a more detailed overview. A positive and significant correlation has been found between most of them. Some of these correlations are particularly noteworthy. Thus, results suggest that the design of the projects is highly stimulating to the students (M2) due to the achievement of a high level of development of their creative abilities (C3; r = 0.53; p < .001) and a better understanding of the content areas (I1; r = 0.54; p < .001). The high level of motivation during the activities (M1) also correlates stronger with their perception of a deeper understanding of the contents (I1; r = 0.50; p < .001) and with the other motivational items, as finding the project stimulating (M2; r = 0.59; p < .001) and having met their expectations (M3; r = 0.51; p < .001). On the other hand, the lower and not significant correlations suggest that adopting different roles (C1) or creating new things from each area (C2) does not provide the students’ feeling of having related the different areas (I2; r = 0.10 with C1; r = 0.19 with C2). It also seems that the students have differentiated between what they have created in the various activities throughout the entire project (C2) and the representation at the end of the project (I3; r = 0.20).