STEAM is a curriculum approach. It is a frame for co-ordinating extra-curricular activities. It is a leadership imperative. It is a way of viewing the world. It represents an innovative approach to teaching and learning that is future-focused and cognisant of the anticipated world in which our children and young people will be living.
STEAM is an approach to curriculum design that is becoming increasingly popular in school systems across the world, and which responds to research into the future economy (NESTA, 2018). In the London Borough of Camden in the UK, STEAM was formally launched in 2017 as a borough-wide priority, encompassing industry, employability, and the curriculum. Shortly after STEAM was launched at Google’s UK headquarters as a borough focus, the STEAM Hub was developed; this peer-to-peer curriculum and leadership development space was designed to provide teachers from across the borough’s 55 state schools with an opportunity to learn how to design and develop an interdisciplinary STEAM curriculum, and to provide them with the leadership knowledge and skills to effect change in their own schools. The Hub was led by a small team comprising the Camden Council officer responsible for the development of STEAM across the borough, Danielle Tobin, and senior leaders from across the borough’s primary, secondary and further education settings: Helen Bruckdorfer, Rob Earrey, Kate Barry, Richard Harrison and Carlo Lui. Together, we developed a bespoke professional learning curriculum delivered across two academic years and in a range of inspiring venues across the borough. We pivoted the programme online during the pandemic so that even a global emergency did not derail the ethically vital work of renewing aspects of curriculum design and delivery across Camden’s schools. Now managed by Lorraine Lawson and Richard Donnelly, the Hub is continuing to provide space for teachers to develop their STEAM curricula as well as to reinforce their leadership practice.
At the heart of STEAM in Camden is a partnership between schools and employers from the full range of sectors that STEAM represents. Partnerships with colleagues from industry have supported the STEAM Hub to provide access for teachers to current knowledge about different employment sectors, ambassadors to enrich schools’ careers work and, most innovatively, have contributed to curriculum design and delivery. Sitting alongside teachers in planning meetings, and standing in front of a class delivering content, employers have brought the current sectoral context into the classroom to enhance and enrich National Curriculum content that could otherwise be divorced from the real-world applicability it should reference. Further, employers are supporting all of Camden’s Year 12 students to access valuable work experience opportunities, while advocating within their organisations on behalf of Camden’s young people in an increasingly competitive and fast-moving jobs market.
Within this context, the innovation and entrepreneurial skills of Camden’s young people are being
honed so that they are better placed to make a material impact on the world. Working with leading brands such as Ted Baker, Google and Bennetts Associates, children and young people in Camden are considering how they can lead innovation in and beyond London. They are exploring their role as changemakers and the drivers of the economy of tomorrow. They are learning to apply theory to practice, and to adopt a creative approach to their thinking that will, it is hoped, inflect their professional lives in the future.
Building on this experience, and after listening to the aspirations of Dr Neelam Parmar, AISL’s Director of Professional Learning and Online Education, we designed a programme to develop the STEAM curriculum and leadership capacities of staff from across AISL schools. The programme aims to support both participants who are inexperienced but enthusiastic about leading STEAM in their schools, alongside those with an increasingly robust track record of developing and delivering STEAM learning in their settings. Drawing on our understanding of teacher learning, the programme asks participants to undertake a ‘Leadership for Change’ project, which provides a real-world space in which participants can apply their learning from the programme. At its heart, the programme is designed to support leaders in AISL schools to understand what sort of a STEAM curriculum is important in their individual contexts in response to the needs of both the children and young people in their schools, but also reflecting the interests and skills of staff, and the opportunities available within the STEAM ecosystem locally. As much as we are exploring what a STEAM curriculum means in an AISL school, we are also disrupting this understanding by moulding that curriculum to suit each of the contexts of the participating schools.
Ultimately, this programme of professional learning is intending to have a positive impact on the children and young people in AISL schools, and to specifically increase their innovation and entrepreneurial skills. As advanced economies around the world respond to a changing economic system, and the influence of AI on work and production (WEF, 2020) changes existing practices, the programme needs to provide the space for teachers to learn together, reflect together, adapt together and agree on the fundamental elements of a curriculum that is supporting children and young people to navigate a more pluralistic, diverse and less linear professional life.
The first cohort of the programme started their journey in January 2024. It is much too early to draw conclusions about the impact of the programme on the participants, the colleagues with whom they work, the children and young people they teach, or their schools. In Camden, as much as in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Shenzhen, it is too early to fully understand the long-term impact of interdisciplinary STEAM learning on young people as they navigate higher study, work-centred learning or a profession, but what the teacher participants in the STEAM programmes in Camden and at AISL share is a palpable desire to increase their knowledge, enhance their capacity for reflection, and adapt their practice to ensure the curricula they teach are engaging, enriching and enticing. They are every bit as innovative and entrepreneurial as the children whose learning and lives will be enriched by this ground-breaking approach to education that STEAM provides, so that those very children are able to lead the world in a more considered, sustainable and equal way.
