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STEAM Education for an Innovative Approach to Sustainability

familiarity with the basic principles of the concept, their understanding re-
mains fragmented and is often limited to individual lectures. Students from
other groups generally encountered the term STEAM for the first time out-
side of formal education-through extracurricular activities, posters, or infor-
mal sources. This supports the findings of Herro and Quigley (2017) and He et
al. (2022), who emphasise that the lack of systematic education about STEAM
hinders its comprehension and implementation.
Regarding attitudes and perceptions, the results indicate a distinctly pos-
itive affective response among students towards the STEAM approach. In all
focus groups, STEAM was perceived as an innovative methodology, closely
aligned with children’s interests, and one that fosters curiosity, motivation,
creativity, and hands-on learning. Participants also recognised that STEAM
encourages the connection between theoretical knowledge and real-life sit-
uations, thus meeting the demands of contemporary education for sustain-
able development.
However, when analysing challenges related to the implementation of
STEAM,acleardiscrepancyemergesbetweenstudents’enthusiasmandtheir
assessment of the practical feasibility of implementation. Students identified
several obstacles: a lack of equipment, time constraints, rigid curricula, and
insufficient transdisciplinary knowledge. A sense of insecurity in team-based
work and in implementing transdisciplinary content was also noted, con-
firming findings by Kartini and Widodo (2020) and Carter et al. (2021) regard-
ing the limitations of institutional support and the complexity of integrated
teaching approaches in real classroom conditions.
In terms of perceived applicability, participants expressed willingness and
intent to implement STEAM in their future work, although the level of speci-
ficity in their proposals varied. Science students (FG2, FG3) exhibited the
highest level of operationalisation, providing concrete examples of topics
where STEAM could be integrated (e.g. photosynthesis, wastewater, chem-
ical reactions). Participants from pedagogy and early childhood education
(FG1, FG4) emphasised the importance of STEAM in promoting playful learn-
ing and early interest stimulation, although they offered fewer specific im-
plementation scenarios. These findings align with Nørgaard et al. (2022), who
note that prospective teachers are generally receptive to active and project-
based learning methods, yet often require further competence development
to implement them effectively.
Our research results also indicate a lack of formal education regarding
the STEAM approach. Students were aware that they possessed only par-
tial theoretical knowledge and lacked practical training that would enable

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