[{"_id":"project:8247","_type":"project","abstract":{"sv":"Projektet handlar om STEAM-undervisning och genus i förskolan. STEAM står för att STEM-ämnena, science, technology, engineering, mathematics – det vill säga naturvetenskap, teknik, ingenjörsvetenskap och matematik, kombineras med ‘Arts’, det vill säga dans, drama, musik och bild. Ett vanligt argument för STEAM-undervisning är att den kan fostra ämnesöverskridande, innovativt tänkande som behövs för att lösa samhällets problem. Projektet tar avstamp i idén att STEAM kan öppna upp för att undervisa på nya sätt i förskolan, bortom könsnormer kopplade till STEM- och Arts-ämnena. Forskning har nämligen visat att könsnormer påverkar elevers och studenters möjligheter att delta i undervisning och välja karriärer inom såväl STEM som Arts. Med detta projekt vill vi undersöka om och hur könsnormer kopplade till STEM och Arts kan överskridas redan på förskolenivå. Projektet genomförs i nära samarbete med förskollärare. Forskarna och förskollärare utforskar STEAM-undervisning på lärarnas förskoleavdelningar med barn i åldern 3-5.","en":"This project concerns STEAM education, that is, STEM(science, technology, engineering, mathematics) combined with Arts (dance, drama, music, visual arts). The purpose is to explore if and how STEAM education can make way for children to engage with STEM and Arts beyond gender norms in Early Childhood Education (ECE). Research has shown that boys have a more narrow space for being and learning in Arts, and girls have a more narrow space for being and learning in STEM. We anticipate that combining Arts and STEM can open up norm-challenging ways of teaching and learning. The aim of the project is to generate knowledge about how STEAM teaching in ECE can traverse gender norms connected to Arts and STEM. The project uses a practice based methodology, informed by a sociomaterial stance. Two teams, each including four-six preschool teachers and two researchers, will explore gender aware STEAM teaching in preschool practice. The main data is recordings from team meetings (audio/video, notes) and from researchers’ visits in practice (video, photo, field notes). We apply a diffractive analysis on our data, guided by sociomaterial understandings of learning and gendering. The STEAM teaching is implemented in 2023 and 2024. In 2025 and 2026, we analyse data and disseminate the results. The project is important since it contributes to making Arts, STEM and STEAM more accessible to children, regardless of gender, and to fostering transdisciplinary problem-solvers needed in the future."},"project_id":"2022-03330_VR","identifier_short":"2022-03330","local_ids":{"hig":["HIG-FORSK 2022/118","77249"]},"dates":{"start_date":"2023-01-01","end_date":"2026-12-31"},"organizations":[{"funding":[{"_id":2,"id":"202100-5208","sv":"Vetenskapsrådet","en":"Swedish Research Council"}]},{"coordinating":[{"_id":504,"id":"202100-3062","sv":"Stockholms universitet","en":"Stockholm University"}]}],"people":[{"project_leaders":[{"name":"Günther-Hanssen, Anna","role":"principal_investigator","affiliation":[{"sv":"Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen, Stockholms universitet"}]}]},{"other_personnel":[{"name":"Areljung, Sofie","role":"co_investigator","affiliation":[{"sv":"Institutionen för tillämpad utbildningsvetenskap, Umeå universitet"}]},{"name":"Lindqvist, Anna","role":"co_investigator","affiliation":[{"sv":"Institutionen för tillämpad utbildningsvetenskap, Umeå universitet"}]},{"_id":"authority-person:60851","orcid":"0000-0003-3412-8486","name":"Magnusson, Lena O","role":"co_investigator","affiliation":[{"_id":876005,"sv":"Utbildningsvetenskap","en":"Educational science","parent":[{"_id":16100,"sv":"Avdelningen för utbildningsvetenskap","en":"Department of Educational sciences","parent":[{"_id":6503,"sv":"Akademin för utbildning och ekonomi","en":"Faculty of Education and Business Studies","parent":[{"_id":62,"id":"202100-2890","sv":"Högskolan i Gävle","en":"University of Gävle"}]}]}]}]}]}],"tags":[{"_id":11742,"id":"503","sv":"Utbildningsvetenskap","en":"Educational Sciences"}],"titles":{"sv":"STEAM-undervisning i förskolan: En möjlighet att överskrida könsnormer med koppling till estetiska uttrycksformer, naturvetenskap, teknik och matematik?","en":"STEAM in early childhood education: An opportunity to traverse gender norms connected to Arts and STEM?"},"total_funding":"5 995 309","type_of_awards":{"sv":"Projektbidrag","en":"Project grant"},"publications":[{"id":"diva2:1954217","type":"article-journal","status":"Published","issued":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"title":"From problem-solving, innovation and creativity to empathy, connection and care? Troubling the use of STEAM buzzwords in early childhood education research","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Günter-Hanssen","given":"Anna","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden"}]},{"family":"Areljung","given":"Sofie","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Educational Science, Umeå University, Sweden"}]},{"family":"Magnusson","given":"Lena O","ORCID":"0000-0003-3412-8486","localId":"leaman","affiliation":[{"id":"876005","name":"Högskolan i Gävle, Utbildningsvetenskap"}]},{"family":"Lindqvist","given":"Anna","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Educational Science, Umeå University, Sweden"}]}],"abstract":" There is a growing trend of addressing the benefits of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) in literature on Early Childhood Education (ECE). The literature often assumes that adding Arts to STEM in ECE will help young children develop a number of skills such as critical thinking, innovation, creativity, problem-solving, communication and collaboration. We refer to these skills as STEAM buzzwords since they are listed in a recurrent way throughout the literature and are seldom critically assessed or challenged. With this colloquium, we aspire to challenge the use of these buzzwords. The main reason is that three of them, innovation, creativity and problem-solving, carry a gendered and unjust history, associated with white men, progress, economic growth and conquest. We argue that an unreflective use of these buzzwords may steer STEAM education in ECE towards fostering ‘human capital’ rather than enabling children to develop close and empathic relations with organisms and other more than human actors and elements in their surrounding world. Therefore, we invite practitioners and researchers to join us in forming a new set of STEAM buzzwords, a set that is just and apt for all children, and for the world.","DOI":"10.1177/14639491251330301","ScopusId":"2-s2.0-105032458200","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-46820","issue":"1","volume":"27","page":"130-135","container-title":"Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood","ISSN":"1463-9491","keyword":"feminist perspectives; innovation; STEAM; twenty-first century skills","publisher":"Sage","published":[{"raw":"2025-04-24T08:44:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2025-04-24T08:44:39.898+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2026-03-23T09:25:43.947+01:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-46820"},{"id":"diva2:1992583","type":"paper-conference","issued":{"date-parts":[[2025]]},"title":"Children's drawing and visual events within STEAM education","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Magnusson","given":"Lena O","ORCID":"0000-0003-3412-8486","localId":"leaman","affiliation":[{"id":"876005","name":"Högskolan i Gävle, Utbildningsvetenskap"}]}],"abstract":"This presentation concerns how preschool children's act of drawing (visual trace-making) and the resulting drawings can become a source of knowledge concerning STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) subjects and the interplay in-between those subjects. The study takes as its point of departure that STEAM education—where the A (i.e., arts), including dance, drama, music, and visual arts, are fully integrated—can expand knowledge development across all the included disciplines. A central premise is that children are viewed as active, meaning-making agents capable of contributing knowledge, experiences, and insights (e.g., Corsaro, 2018) to everyday educational practices. The data in focus derives from an ethnographic fieldwork and addresses children's drawings intentionally produced during planned STEAM teaching events and those that emerge spontaneously within educational practices of STEAM learning. In the analysis performed, the use of a spotlight approach is tried out, which entails directing the searchlight towards four positionings (Areljung, 2023) that can show STEAM learning in the visual events in the produced data (video, photos, and field notes). The study adhered to the ethical principles, including provisions for information, informed consent, the right to withdraw from participation, confidentiality in data usage and children's informed consent during the ethnographic fieldwork. The interplay between visual events, children's drawings and STEAM education makes way for new and altered ways of understanding knowledge development within STEAM education. The study's results can contribute to research and provide practical insights into how children learn and what they learn through drawing in the context of STEAM education.","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-48112","container-title":"E21: The potential of picture books, drawings and play","event":"33rd EECERA, Early Education for All: Celebrating Diversity and Seeking Inclusion, Bratislava, Slovakia 25-28 August 2025","keyword":"children’s drawings; drawing (visual trace-making); STEAM education; STEAM interplay; spotlight method; visual events","published":[{"raw":"2025-08-27T20:58:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2025-08-27T20:58:44.890+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2025-10-02T12:02:27.847+02:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-48112"},{"id":"diva2:1944208","type":"paper-conference","issued":{"date-parts":[[2024]]},"title":"Teachers, researchers, children, friction, dance skirts, drawings, lamp posts and emotions : How different agents can affect the trajectory of a practice-based research project","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Günther-Hanssen","given":"Anna","affiliation":[]},{"family":"Areljung","given":"Sofie","affiliation":[]},{"family":"Magnusson","given":"Lena O","ORCID":"0000-0003-3412-8486","localId":"leaman","affiliation":[{"id":"876005","name":"Högskolan i Gävle, Utbildningsvetenskap"}]},{"family":"Lindqvist","given":"Anna","affiliation":[]}],"abstract":" This presentation elaborates on how different agents, human and nonhuman, enact participation in a practice-based research project about STEAM education in preschool. The project is carried out in two teams of four-six teachers and two researchers each. Researchers and teachers work in close collaboration with children (3-5-years old), spaces and materials in their preschools. Theoretically, the project employs a sociomaterial stance (eg. Barad, 2007), implying that the research process takes shape through collaboration between all the part-taking agents, both human and nonhuman. The presentation is built around a number of agential cuts (Barad, 2014) created at an early stage of a project. These cuts concern how different agents, such as teachers, researchers, children, materials and concepts, participate and how their participation affects the project. For example, we will elaborate on how the participation of a child, a lamp post, a researcher and physical phenomena (friction) affected the trajectory of the project. We will also discuss how different agents’ participation can increase or decrease the participation of other agents in the project.","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-46612","event":"7th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, 10-12 January 2024, Helsinki, Finland.","keyword":"practice-based research; preschool; human and nonhuman participation; STEAM","published":[{"raw":"2025-03-12T17:56:49.709+01:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2025-03-12T17:56:49.779+01:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2025-10-02T12:20:56.266+02:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-46612"},{"id":"diva2:1857904","type":"paper-conference","issued":{"date-parts":[[2024]]},"title":"Transdisciplinary STEAM education : opportunities for thinking, doing and being beyond the already known?","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Günther-Hanssen","given":"Anna","ORCID":"0000-0001-5417-7432","affiliation":[{"name":"Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden"}]},{"family":"Areljung","given":"Sofie","ORCID":"0000-0001-7273-5442","localId":"soearg02","affiliation":[{"id":"5301","name":"Umeå universitet, Institutionen för tillämpad utbildningsvetenskap"}]},{"family":"Magnusson","given":"Lena O.","ORCID":"0000-0003-3412-8486","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden"}]},{"family":"Lindqvist","given":"Anna","localId":"anabom85","affiliation":[{"id":"5301","name":"Umeå universitet, Institutionen för tillämpad utbildningsvetenskap"}]}],"abstract":"In this workshop, we welcome researchers interested in transdisciplinary learning and questions of traversing norms within education - from preschool to higher education. Together we will explore the potentialities of merging STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Arts (dance, drama, music, visual arts) into STEAM. The concept of STEAM education has become increasingly influential in many parts of the world during the last years. STEAM education is promoted as an arena for developing transdisciplinary knowledge and fostering innovative thinkers who can meet the demands of the future in sustainable ways (Ingold, 2019). One additional argument behind STEAM education is to motivate underrepresented groups, particularly girls, to engage with STEM (European Committee of the Regions, 2019; Ng & Ferguson, 2020). According to research, gender norms connected to STEM and to the arts, imply that some students, thinkings and doings are recognised by teachers and peers, whereas others are not. For example, girls and women have a more narrow space for participating and being recognised as learners in STEM (e.g. Heeg & Avraamidou, 2021; Stephenson, Fleer & Fragkiadaki, 2022), while boys and men have a more narrow space for participating and being recognised as learners in Arts (e.g. Hentschel, 2018; Oliver & Risner, 2017). This implies that children and students face different kinds of normative constraints when they are expected to engage with the world through separate disciplines, that is scientifically, technologically, artistically, engineeringly or mathematically. As we see it, transdisciplinary STEAM education harbours the potential to form new and norm-challenging ways of teaching and learning (Areljung & Günther-Hanssen, 2022). The transdisciplinary explorations during the workshop will focus on verbs connected to STEM and Arts. You do not need any specific background in STEM or Arts to participate. Expected outcomes are that the workshop will open up to new ways of being and learning, beyond current gender norms connected to different disciplines in education.","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-224345","container-title":"NERA 2024 : programme","event":"NERA 2024, Malmö, Sweden, March 6-8, 2024","published":[{"raw":"2024-05-15T08:18:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2024-05-15T08:18:41.126+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2024-05-15T10:23:11.643+02:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-224345"}],"links":[{"type":"pid","link":"https://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/api/project/swecris/project:8247"}]}]