Sec. 206. National Research Council report on STEAM education
504 words·~2 min read·
/bill/113/hr/4159/ih/section-206A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
It is the sense of Congress that— the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(STEM)Talent Expansion Program set an important goal of increasing the number of students graduating with associate or baccalaureate degrees in the STEM fields, and this should continue to be a focus of that program; to further the goal of the STEM Talent Expansion Program, as well as STEM education promotion programs across the Federal Government, innovative approaches are needed to enhance STEM education in the United States; STEAM, which is the integration of arts and design, broadly defined, into Federal STEM programming, research, and innovation activities, is a method-validated approach to maintaining the competitiveness of the United States in both workforce and innovation and to increasing and broadening students’ engagement in the STEM fields; STEM graduates need more than technical skills to thrive in the 21st century workforce; they also need to be creative, innovative, collaborative, and able to think critically; STEAM should be recognized as providing value to STEM research and education programs across Federal agencies, without supplanting the focus on the traditional STEM disciplines; Federal agencies should work cooperatively on interdisciplinary initiatives to support the integration of arts and design into STEM, and current interdisciplinary programs should be strengthened; Federal agencies should allow for STEAM activities under current and future grant-making and other activities; and Federal agencies should clarify that, where appropriate, data collection, surveys, and reporting on STEM activities and grant-making should examine activities that involve cross-disciplinary learning that integrates specialized skills and expertise from both art and science. The National Science Foundation shall enter into an arrangement with the National Research Council to conduct a workshop on the integration of arts and design with STEM education. The workshop shall include a discussion of— how the perspectives and experience of artists and designers may contribute to the advancement of science, engineering, and innovation, for example through the development of visualization aids for large experimental and computational data sets; how arts and design-based education experiences might support formal and informal STEM education at the pre-K–12 level, particularly in fostering creativity and risk taking, and encourage more students to pursue STEM studies, including students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM; how the teaching of design principles can be better integrated into undergraduate engineering and other STEM curricula, including in the first two years of undergraduate studies, to enhance student capacity for creativity and innovation and improve student retention, including students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM; and what additional steps, if any, Federal science agencies should take to promote the inclusion of arts and design principles in their respective STEM programs and activities in order to improve student STEM learning outcomes, increase the recruitment and retention of students into STEM studies and careers, and increase innovation in the United States. Not later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the National Research Council shall submit a report to Congress providing a summary description of the discussion and findings from the workshop required under subsection (b).