Reframing the role of creativity in STEAM for Mathematics learning:insights from two projects Taxonomies and LabSTEM

Despite years of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) research, the same mathematics learning issues persist in primary/secondary schools (Kjeldsen et al., 2024):<br/>• Most STEAM [Arts included] research on playful learning/gamification emphasizes motivation over formal knowledge acquisition (Jaramillo-Mediavilla. et al. 2024).<br/>• The roles and positioning of mathematics are often diminished within the increased STEM framework (English, 2016).<br/>As a result, it is hard for mathematics teachers to see the advantages of including creativity, play or even arts in the learning mathematics.<br/>This can have different implications:<br/>• Negative effect: Mathematics teachers may withdraw from supporting interdisciplinary STEM research, limiting the exploration of creative pedagogies.<br/>• Positive effect: Traditional pedagogical methods could be revisited and still add value in contemporary teaching.<br/>Data from the two project LabSTEM and Taxonomies shows a need to reframe creativity in STEM/STEAM projects and teachers need to experience how creative approaches contribute to learning. The projects include observations of six STEM classes and interviews with 12 teachers. <br/>Hence we ask the following questions: How can we construct a shared platforms for investigating the role of creativity in mathematics education?<br/>We propose a feedback and retrofitting model for creative STEM education where: <br/>• Creativity should not move out of the formal, but rather strengthen the grounding for formal scientific and mathematical knowledge (Larsen &amp; Chunfang, in review). <br/>• Creative tasks should foster needs for and understanding of the formal knowledge from the pupils’ perspective, leading to revising learning material and formulating goal-oriented questions to teachers (Marchetti et al., 2023).<br/>• Requirements for formal knowledge are reframed as requirements for a creative task to be fulfilled (Larsen &amp; Svendsen, in review)<br/>More schools engaged in creative experimentation once teachers participated and saw useful results. We advocate for experience-based approaches that create a negotiation-space with teachers to explore innovative, need-based pedagogies. <br/>