Page 469 - Vseživljenjsko učenje kot temelj trajnostne družbe

STEAM Education for an Innovative Approach to Sustainability

notable lack of empirical research focused on how student teachers per-
ceive and understand this approach. This study seeks to address this gap
by exploring the perceptions, self-assessed readiness, and potential barri-
ers faced by pre-service teachers in adopting STEAM pedagogy within their
future professional practice.
Additionally,studiesindicatethatintegratingtheartsintoSTEMdisciplines
fosters creativity, critical thinking, and transdisciplinary collaboration among
students. For instance, Papadopoulou (2024) emphasises the significance of
arts integration in cultivating essential twenty-first-century skills. A system-
atic review by Amanova et al. (2025) highlights the positive impact of STEAM
education on learners’ performance and skill development. These findings
underscore the growing emphasis on STEAM methodologies to prepare stu-
dents for complex, real-world challenges. An increasing number of institu-
tions worldwide are seeking to equip student teachers with the skills neces-
sary to implement this concept in their future professional practice (Marín-
Marín et al., 2021; Deák & Kumar, 2024). These authors note that STEAM initia-
tives in higher education are often only partially applicable and that a uni-
fied methodology for implementing STEAM in academic institutions is still
lacking. Moreover, questions arise regarding the readiness of university edu-
cators to embrace the STEAM approach and the type of training that would
be necessary to prepare them for its application.
Some experimental studies have shown that the application of STEAM-
based teaching in higher education has a positive influence on students’ mo-
tivation across various scientific disciplines and enhances both their cogni-
tive and psychomotor skills, encouraging them to adopt STEAM methodolo-
gies in their future careers (Šlekien˙ e, 2019;Arpacietal.,2023).The application
of both transdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches is, in most cases,
well received by science students, who generally demonstrate a willingness
to adopt and apply this learning model in practice (Maghfiroh et al., 2023).
Some authors identify the lack of training programmes aimed at enhanc-
ing transdisciplinary teaching competencies as one of the main obstacles to
the practical implementation of STEAM within higher education. This trend
is frequently attributed to the rigid institutional structures of universities and
existing educational policies (Clarke, 2018; Sánchez Milara & Cortés Orduña,
2024).
Lupión-Cobos, Girón-Gambero, and García-Ruiz (2022), in their study on
collaboration between schools and research institutions, stress the impor-
tance of problem-based learning in authentic scientific contexts. Although
the study does not focus specifically on teacher training, its findings support

469