By Evangelia Panou and Anastasios Violetis
ABSTRACT
The aim of this work is to reveal the benefits arising from understanding cultural heritage issues through STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) education. Further aim is to motivate Greek teachers to combine cultural issues teaching integrated with STEM disciplines so as to give a boost to the reform of the curriculums of subjects taught in Greek schools of secondary education in the direction of interdisciplinarity. To this direction, arts and cultural heritage should be integrated in the educational process and subject such as Mathematics, Physics and History should be taught in a STEAM educational approach so that students’ creativity and innovativeness may be boosted. A very good example of the role that cultural heritage may play is the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes, an ancient building in the Roman Agora of Athens which has recently recorded as an astronomical monument of cultural heritage by UNESCO. This monument can be used in the educational process for teaching subjects through STEAM activities, due to the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge (e.g. astronomy, geometry, architecture, sculpture, engineering) that was needed for both its construction and function. In this respect, a purposive sample of teachers who teach different subjects in public schools of secondary education in Greece was selected and semi structured interviews were designed recording teachers’ opinions about STEAM education using as example the “Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes” monument. The results of this research are presented here.
