STEAM Learning Architecture: A Framework for Educational Innovation

The educational landscape for young learners around the world is varied, expansive, and deeply in need of innovative approaches, programs, and environments that challenge and demonstrate alternatives to the prevailing industrial model of school. As technology progresses and societies become more complex, learners require more from education than just receiving information to demonstrate memorization—they need to be prepared for the jobs of the future, meaningful careers, and to become active, engaged members of their communities. Learners need to be adaptable, ready for change, and empowered to think in new ways. To do this, learning environments must place learners first.

The STEAM Learning Architecture is a framework for educational innovation that puts learners at the center, prioritizing pedagogical approaches that focus on development of the whole person academically, socially, and personally. It addresses both how people learn and how to design powerful, learner-driven educational experiences. The framework embraces a wide-ranging view of what PreK through undergraduate education is capable of, promoting, among other concepts:

• a transdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning
• understanding culture as a key part of social and emotional learning
• hands-on, project-based learning as a primary pedagogical method
• robust and intentional use of open-ended technologies, both analog and digital
• educators as designers of learning experiences
• experimentation and iteration as a fundamental practice for both learners and educators
• that learning happens everywhere, not just inside the classroom
• building real-world experiences, like internships, career pathways, and applied projects into educational programs

Structurally, the Learning Architecture begins with a set of three foundational pillars that ground the rationale of the framework: Social, Emotional, and Cultural Learning; Transdisciplinary Academics; and Community Engagement. It then describes how to select and develop key learning areas, identifies and explains core practices that support the foundational pillars, presents strategies for implementing competency-based learning and assessment, and culminates with recommendations and best practices for designing and implementing new learning experiences. The sections are:

1. Foundational Pillars. The foundational pillars are the Learning Architecture’s three core elements, informing all practices, activities, and program elements for a learning environment.
2. Key Learning Areas. The key learning areas are the major categories of learning within which an educational institution situates its program and learning experiences. This section includes an example set of key learning areas and describes how they can be used in different ways.
3. Core Practices. The core practices are the pedagogical, social and emotional, and learning science methodologies supported by the foundational pillars. This section describes those practices and gives examples of how they might be implemented.
4. Competency-Based Learning and Assessment. The assessment section describes an overall approach to assessing growth and development. It describes how learners are evaluated and progress through an educational program.
5. Program Design Approach. The program design approach describes principles and best practices for creating new materials, courses, and projects, both through iteration on existing curriculum and the development of new program elements.

The framework is, above all else, intended to be contextualized for different populations and environments. It provides a specific point of view about ways of thinking and ways of implementing, but it is adaptable and simply theoretical without application to real learners, educators, and experiences.