Attitudes and Challenges Music Teachers in Preschool and Elementary School Face when Integrating Music in the Interdisciplinary STEAM Approach

Early STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has a significant role in developing thinking in children in preschool and elementary school age. The process of learning supports children’s development in constructing their own knowledge, in designing, discussing, and testing ideas and finding solutions to different problems. The questions and solutions that require non-standard thinking and imagination provoked John Maeda in 2002 to introduce the arts to the commented approach. At the beginning, he proposed to integrate only the visual arts and especially those in the field of design, but many educators defended the thesis that, in addition to those listed, others could be added too. Thereby, creativity, cultural diversity and aesthetic features as form and content are added to the scientific fields and the approach acquires the extended version - STEAM. The results of the research and analysis of music educators' positions showed the need to implement music to STEM subjects and the need to train teachers to learn how to integrate music into the STEAM approach.