A STEAM Approach to Teaching Programming: The Example of Mandala Art
Li-Hsiang Hung, Chih-Hung Yu, Chiu-Fan Hu, Cheng-Chih Wu · 2025
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) integrated instructional approach not only increases students' interest in learning hard science but also enhances their understanding in arts. We proposed a five-step STEAM interdisciplinary-integrated instructional model to teach student programming, which are: choosing an art example, inspiring creativity, hands-on design, programming implementation, optimizing and sharing. We used the model to design materials to teach middle school student modular programming with the Mandala Art design. The results showed that the proposed STEAM model promoted students' learning, enhanced their understanding of art concepts, and inspired students' thinking.