This document summarizes discussions from several conferences focused on integrating arts and sciences in education (STEM to STEAM). Key topics included defining STEAM and determining best practices for implementation. Examples were provided of projects integrating subjects like dance cognition, medical drawing to build empathy, and using artistic projects to teach math and science concepts. Barriers to integration like teacher training and resources were discussed. Attendees emphasized the importance of collaboration between educators and finding ways to apply integrated learning both in and out of traditional classrooms.

1. Washington, DC (Smithsonian) Conference
Mike Kaspar on STEM.
DC abolished their Science Dept. a year ago. But 6 new STEM Catalyst Schools were
established.
Participants views of STEM:
Most speak of accelerated integration of science technology engineering and math. Kaspar
reports on a definition of STEM he heard at @NSTA meeting. However, he declares its
definition not as important as how it's implemented. What are the STEM policy and practice
definitions? The 6 STEM catalyst schools implement it in different ways.
Pearl Schaeffer on Polygon Blooms project - Philadelphia Arts & Ed Partnership integrating arts
in community + schools. Features skills alignment. Working with math and art teachers on
spatial awareness and using arts to enliven geometry teaching. Polygon Blooms uses students'
experience to plot lines of their own movement as basis for geometric forms, then transformed
into polygons. Polygon Blooms results in benchmark tests showed students in program excelled
beyond expectations
Anu Mitra from Cincinnati Union Institute on Learning on How to Look project at Cincinnati
Art. They connected her to University of Cincinnati medical students and she is working with
them ... 70% students never visited art museum. Anu invented "Intentional Looking" technique
Part of a "Design Thinking" approach. See her article on powerful "intentional observation".
Her approach demonstrates how the arts actually add necessary skills to scientist's toolkit.
"Intentional Looking" guides through chaos. Working with med students to enable more
effective "differential diagnosis". Arts can help in making more thoughtful analysis.
LemelsonCenter on history of invention presentation on how implement STEAM. Necessarily
interdisciplinary. Lemelson Center: 2 key beliefs: invention is a process; everyone is inventive.
Invention covers all STEAM disciplines + History. Drawing + Art are integral to whole process.
Try to make inventors more accessible. Inventors often very playful so created Invention at Play
exhibit http://goo.gl/wNuua
Julie's summary of Practice session:
 Clear natural connection between arts and sciences. An umbrella or Big Idea really helps.
 Advocacy: so how do we make it happen more effectively? How to develop policy
around STEAM? How to help Mike Kaspar in bringing back to NEA a definition of
STEM?
 What are priority points to move forward as an Educational Practice Group? Is there any
mapping of what is going on?

2.  How to scale? Give impetus to smaller projects.
 Change to iSTEM; i = integration
 Inventory of STEM Schools? Practices Clearinghouse (Kaspar knows more about STEM
activity than STEAM activity.)
 Equate Mapping to Clearinghouse. Need identify artists/orgs on visual map
 National Creative Network that connects commerce, schools, etc. They are mapping
communities. May 17 webinar (Sclafani)
 Need to include Early Childhood Learning. The natural scientists. That's where this
begins. Birth to Lifelong. Not just schools
 Facilitate the field trip process. Museums key to this.
 Even more spaces. Science Cafes.
 Women Inventors/Scientists.
 Need new measures of achievement; new tests
 Parents are key and need help too
Chicago (IIT) Conference
 Norm Lederman opens Educational Practice Working Group. Opens with some
definitions.
 Stress that assessment doesn't necessarily kill innovation - depends on how it’s
conducted.
 Perspectives IIT Math-Science School. Problem how to infuse arts in the school.
 One project for a student field studies project to make a "technology tree" -showing
relationships between technologies.
 Capstone synergy courses that integrate across all curricula - themes such as pollution,
local parking. Has key communication element.
 All projects result in museum exhibition that emphasized the communication element.
 Marcelo Caplan on Informal Science Exploration afterschool program in 9 community
centers around Chicago.
 Develop 10-week modules on popular topics - such as alternative energy. Important for
them to be able to communicate with their families.
 Big Idea: students can choose what to do and can be proud of the product (e.g. building a
solar car, or developing a musical instrument.

3.  All products designed by students.
 Big Idea: Students who want to learn + parents give their support + contribution to
community
 Shows video on pollution - all student made. Design Table where all projects designed by
students
 Judith Lederman who worked in museums focusing on primary level students. One
teaching science with immigrant children.
 Throughout integrating science and art and their native cultures. Using a "Who Am I?"
science + culture + language + art approach.
 Using children's storybooks and mining them for scientific understanding and processes.
 Not investigation of natural workd but an attempt to create curiosity - to push them to ask
and then answer the questions.
 Julie Simpson on specific models outside schools together with some definitions
 Teaching v professional artist. Is art just self-expression; or is it also about social change?
To connect to the social from personal.
 The "Arts-Wired" school/community concept. To give basic skills/concepts as a utility.
 Judith Lederman: the importance of bringing together as many art teachers together to
talk about processes of inquiry.
 Integration example of art teacher teaching about light with prisms - could track and use
color and then discuss the physics of light.
 Applauded the CPS action of sending teams of 1 art + 1science teacher to the conference.
 Applauded the CPS action of sending teams of 1 art+1science teacher to the conference.
 Question: Physics teacher thinking back to when she was an artist. Unconsciously using
arts skills - how to make that more determined? One response is to co-teach with an art
teacher. (Be aware of difference between functional vs. decorative).
 Question of definition of "science." Importance about defining and then connecting the
different science disciplines. Art could help.
 Norm on art and science but within the sciences there are all different ways of seeing.
Agreed that we need more conversations about this.
 Judy on the importance of linking the units of science education.
 Comment that both art and science are different kinds of responses, diff forms of
investigations of the natural world.
 Problem of art being decorative rather than being a parallel process of inquiry.

4.  Comment on the importance of the 2-way communication. Art teachers do have immense
reservoirs of technical/scientific knowledge.
 Misconception that "everyone can do art" but "only a few can do science". Art can help
make science less intimidating.
 Judy starting a list of key points about the difficulty about arts-science integration. Math-
science an illustration of this.
 Success of integration has much to do with teacher education. Cost of team-teaching;
mastermind who can bring it together.
 Norm maintains integration not usually working. Response that teachers are able to
educate themselves in the other fields.
 Comment that teacher-collaboration is key. Need to be able to discover and share . SF
partnerships great examples.
 How can we learn from the apparent failure in other integrative efforts? Which have
succeeded and why?
 Julie Lemon stresses that university NSF grants always have lines for "education"
programs - so there's money available for outreach
 Public school art teacher addresses her context: needs structure for wkg with science
teacher. *How* to do it?
 Judy's experience as hi-school teacher: have to start by yourself. Time is one problem.
Find key intersections when to introduce
 Teacher curious about integrated curriculums. CAPE has curriculums on website.
 But not the curriculum, its the process of the collaboration that is key. UG, CAPE CCAP
as 3 Chicago orgs that help with this.
 Have to find the leaders within the schools who are trying to make integration work. Julie
on getting funders involved in this.
 Marcelo on need for stronger leadership; need for using every opportunity to include in
planning
 Take step back from curriculum to look at standards - see arts as another vehicle for
achieving goals. Making the mapping smarter.
 Summation: looking at needs - in the nation but also in the individual classroom. Funding
for time and instruction + leader buy-in
 "Intersections" as a key concept. Finding ways to focus on and bringing out the
intersections you can find. Maximize the possible.

5.  Importance of taking excitement from museums and other sources - bring the experience
into the classroom
 Technology *can* help - many teachers collaborate online for a few minutes a day: social
networking; asking questions
 Expressed need for databases of resources to assist educators. Arts Education Exchange
being built by Arts Alliance of Illinois
 Teachers need to see examples of what works to be inspired.
 Judy emphasizing the importance of research and of going to meetings with the data.
Communicate the data!
Working Group Report-Outs (Ledermans)
 Still need to work on definitions and to focus on the purpose of the integration
 Education: compiled some key words operating between the arts and science ways of
knowing
 Education: 2 levels of needs - on the national level of policy and funding, and in the
classroom/museum/after-school space
San Diego (CalIT2) Conference
Chair:
Gabriele Wienshausen
Associate Dean for Education, Division of Biological Sciences, UCSD
Presenters:
Martin Wollesen
Artistic Director, UCSD ArtPower!
Joyce Cutler-Shaw
Artist in Residence, UCSD School of Medicine (also a world renown artist)
Paige Simpson
Director, Balboa Park Learning Institute
Martin:
ArtPower is UCSD to aims to enliven the everyday out of class experience for students, extend
the academic investigations students are having in their coursework and extend the reach of
campus arts outside of campus. Martin wants to change the delivery of performing arts; disrupt
the paradigm. Upon joining UCSD, he wanted to create a robust engagement project to bring
down the barriers between art and science. We are all created by nature so perhaps providing
opportunities to explore, discover and create would be a way to proceed. Innovator in Residence
grew out of this desire as a way to rethink practice. The initial investigation was how is
cognition distributed in dance? They were curious to see how the creative process was used to

6. build understanding and how cues influenced the understandings. Artists didn’t want to
quantify. They felt it was a process that would somehow diminished their creativity. While
uncomfortable, it helped both scientists and artists look at translation and cognition through
different lenses and disrupted ideas about the ways in which science and art do not work together
in an effort to create a more symbiotic view.
Q&A: Were the concerns of the artists disrupted? Did they have a change of mind regarding
their biases? Martin’s answer wasn’t completely clear. It was acknowledged that there was
discomfort and each realized there were two sides. However, are there two sides or simply
multiple perspectives to the same body of work and understandings?
What was the process of getting them in the room together; the scientists and artists? Identified
creative projects on campus, had an informal meeting/lunch to initiate conversation, extracted the
pearls from those conversations, built upon those ideas that came from those conversations. The
work flowed from there.
Joyce:
What a captivating speaker. She began to tell us of her work at UCSD but transitioned into
background that described several deaths she had been involved with that she wanted to
understand further in a clinical setting. She described each of her in-laws, her mother. These
stories were actually quite beautifully told. Without saying the words art or science it was clear
that her experience was both very scientific and artistic. She ended up meeting the Dean of the
School of Medicine and discussed the possibility of studying death at his school. For a year, she
drew from cadavers and skeletons, sharing them with the dean. She then asked if she could be
part of the anatomy course. He agreed to allow her to be an artist-in-residence. Drawing is an
act of empathy, of inquiry, of discovery. Her approach in drawing is because the history of
anatomy is a history of human representation. Historically, there was a social and cultural
consciousness that you were one of many and that you were part of life and death. Now,
technology and medical advancements has disrupted this. Further, in medical terms, humans are
always in pursuit of survival, evolution and transformation yet often we are connecting less and
less, which is disruptive. Technologies give us increased opportunities to see what we couldn’t
before, to be informed in tremendously powerful ways, yet we need to remember to look at the
world with strong visual perception skills. We talk more about image over the person. We see
so much electronically and less face-to-face. In her classes here she aims to help medical
students to hone those visual perception skills and look at the patient, to look at other ways to see
what is in front of you; to think alternatively. For example, as she has them draw an orange she
has them do it from the perspective of the ant. Along with this, she asks them to open the orange
and draw what they see in order to build connection to the subject. She is showing them there is
not a strategy for completing the assignment; rather it is an exercise in empathy.
Lovely.
Q&A:

7. Thank you for the comment on the immediacy of meeting whatever you are dealing with through
your direct contact with it. In the age of so many virtual relationships this is becoming more
important. How has your class shaped or transformed their personalities. Joyce says that is
difficult to say. Instead, she explained how she engages the students right away and has them
begin talking about that work right away. She is more focused on the work and encouraging the
behaviors that build those skills.
Paige:
Twenty-six institutions in Balboa Park that make up the Learning Institute and formed nearly
three years ago. It serves as a communications hub, professional development programs and the
cultivation of their unique learning laboratory. Wanting to capitalize on the melting pot they
have and the learning that can take place in partnership. Started two years ago aiming to find out
what the upside was for visitors; visitor studies. There were 20 staff members from 12
organizations that participated in this audience research project. It was a ten-month project that
started last March. They based their work on Nina Simon, John Falk and others for inspiration
through their work in participatory science, visitor motivation, customer relations, etc. They
were not only developing an instrument they could use to measure but also learning a great deal
about evaluation through a hired consultant. The partners were also able to tailor their survey’s
to meet their organization’s needs while honoring the collective effort. Through volunteers they
were able to gather over 10k responses over the summer of 2010. They held a symposium to
share the work. About 700 people participated in this event. This past March they held a
sPARK event to further engage colleagues in arts, science and other cultural professionals to
explore ambitious ideas for their institutions while collaborating and creating with peers. The
social aspects of this event and this partnership were of tremendous value.
Discussion:
Gabriele: What are the different learning environments we need to see to support integrated arts
and science learning?
Participant: Within the context of each of our individual specialties it would be interesting to
have a lab to explore this relationship; the practice of integrated art and science learning.
Martin: The question is what delivery vehicle is meaningful rather than if art itself is meaningful
or not. The location-based experience is being influenced by technology. Also, are we making
incorrect assumptions about where people are having meaningful interactions with art and how
that meaning takes place?
Participant: Cannot lose sight of the idea of a lab because it makes a picture in my mind where
someone is learning in this space and then sharing out. A lab is a place where you can better
understand things then share with those in the trenches that cannot experiment in the same way.
Martin: We are just looking for ways to make connections regardless of the location.

8. Participant: How do we capitalize on the excitement of this conference? I need a date, time and
place to continue this conversation and some level of structure to work within. It could be as
simple as a topic starter or book club format in that it is informal but has some guiding aspect.
Participant: I would look for a lab to take the abstract idea of combining art and science into a
tangible example or actionable activities.
Participant: Maybe it shouldn’t be called Lab and instead call it a community resource center.
Think about corridors of knowledge and the language that can be used across those corridors to
keep the work accessible.
Participant: A high school science teacher and realist, I am busy Monday-Sunday so cannot
make time to meet regularly. Instead, try virtual dialogue opportunities or keep it as a drop in
structure.
Participant: Before there is a lab, we need matchmakers. How do we find the matchmakers?
We are artists and artist driven. (Editorial note: why the silo, like a badge of honor? Why are we
simply not capable, critical thinking, empathetic beings?)
Participant: We can have topic based, regular meetings, however, how do we get to the
resources to support the activities we are hoping to engage or implement in our communities.
These meetings can shape thinking but can they support the work?
Participant: We have lots of organizations that can provide a lot of individual things. I liked
what Paige described and the importance of surveying your audience. Perhaps this kind of
survey could drive our work and the topics we discuss.
Participant: We could do a better job of networking to better understand what resources are
available. Who wants to be involved? Who wants that involvement? What are the resources
being brought to the table? Perhaps it is a website indexing the work and resources in other
communities that would be helpful to all of us as we are driving change in our own communities.
Maybe a website?
Gabriele: We have a huge cultural issue in creating these connections. Who manages it? What
are the existing models and what are the barriers for implementation in more communities. Let’s
find out what is working elsewhere and figure out how to translate it.
Participants: Digressing a bit to discuss differences of opinions about a San Diego group that is
trying to tackle this in the SD community.
Participant: We can argue all day but we are missing an opportunity to create a future vision.
Gabriele: I believe it means something that we are here at Calit2 and that I dare that we should
come up with a proposal.
Personal Reflection of the Education Practice Workgroup (Madlyn):

9. I found it interesting to hear about three different bodies of work from the presenters of this
workshop. I imagine there are hundreds of great programs and work being done through the
people in this small group alone. I would love the opportunity to hear and learn more about this
work. In fact, it could easily be an outcome of this conference to have someone take a chair role
in putting together a panel session and/or poster session at a national conference like AAM that
provides a broader foundation from which to highlight this theme; art and science integration for
the benefit of enhanced and deeply meaningful learning.
One could then conduct an AAM roundtable discussion that can extend these conversations and
exploration of interesting work happening at this intersection. It would further drive dialogue
and engagement with a broader audience from the arts and science fields. It would also give
great visibility for national funders to become more aware of the work of Learning Worlds
Institute.
Regarding the post-presentation discussion, while interesting and very participatory, there
existed the familiar and ongoing tightrope being walked between looking at all the limitations
and barriers to change and the passion and enthusiasm to see change happen right away. While
not personally stimulating, I understand this kind of discourse is what does inspire and engage
some people. I believe it creates a wonderful opportunity for this organization/project to follow-
up with attendees with a “We heard you say…” and “Here are our next steps” report that could
also serve to recruit advisory groups of people together that were especially engaged and who
would like to be catalysts for change both locally and nationally.
These same groups could help advance our work through the use of an inquiry group model that
works to answer some key questions; an informal research group of sorts.
Finally, I just wanted to point out that in both this conference and the one in Chicago there were
such a broad diversity of people in attendance, at a conference that was more about creating a
future vision/direction than solving the nuts and bolts specific niche issues, that were looking for
different kinds of outcomes. Some were problem solving and some were contributing to next
steps in the vision planning; problem specific discussions versus big idea / next step discussions.
The discourse that occurred in these discussions will hopefully inform the core organizing group
and advisory committee in distilling what was learned and what the next steps are.
Communication will be one important way to keep folks engaged and expand the audience The
Art of Science Learning/Learning Worlds Institute reaches.