Abstract

The addition of Arts to STEM education in Korea has given rise to STEAM education, which aims to increase student interest and confidence and to cultivate creative human resources. Several teacher training courses are offered. We examined the teaching plans of in-service teachers who took the advanced STEAM training course. By analyzing the frame of context, the levels of convergence, and the key competencies of their teaching plans, we found that interdisciplinary convergence was greater in elementary than in secondary teaching plans, while multidisciplinary convergence was greater in secondary rather than elementary teaching plans. Further, certain key competency categories including “cooperate in teams,” “act within the big picture,” and “defend and assert rights” were favored by elementary teachers in this study. The frame of contexts were similar in the elementary and secondary cases, but their teaching plans focused on two distinct subcategories, ‘environment’ and ‘advanced scientific technology.’