STEAM Project: Al Iman School – Girls’ Section

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Please share a brief background of your innovation.

Al-Iman Schools -Girls’ Section, implemented the STEAM Project in 2018, which is a global educational orientation and philosophy that works on the integration of 5 main areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) to achieve sustainable development by solving global problems. The school management’s mission is to prepare its students to handle the contemporary practical reality and to qualify them for current and future jobs.

How was it planned?

The school’s senior leadership held a series of introductory meetings with the academic departments to understand the mechanism for implementing STEAM in the school due to its specificity to a wide segment of the school’s students (from seventh to eleventh grade) and its close connection with all basic and enrichment subjects in the school. The work began by forming a team of the middle leadership and teachers of the school’s academic departments to supervise the implementation of the project and to allocate a unified class per week for implementation. An integrated plan has also been prepared to ensure the effective participation of all school and academic departments while also cooperating with the local community institutions and organizations in achieving the project’s objectives.

Did you face any challenges in implementation?

The only challenge during the preparation and implementation of the project was to find the optimal mechanism to circulate it to all students of all ages and educational groups. The school was able to deal with this challenge positively by first, forming groups of students so that the comprehensiveness of the different educational groups was taken into account. Second, by addressing different age groups so that the contentof the lessons and the requirements of the project based on the knowledge and skills specific to each grade were differentiated.

A brief assessment of your results

The project achieved great success and was praised by educational specialists and academics who contributed to its implementation and evaluation during the four years of implementation. The most prominent points of distinction are that the project connected students to global issues and challenges, enabling them to find innovative solutions to the problems raised in the project; increasing the knowledge balance of students by searching for reliable sources of information, attending lectures, and educational workshops; enhancing and employing the skills built by students in various fields; effective community partnership from various public and private organizations in the Kingdom of Bahrain, as an investment in the success achieved by the project and the good recognition it has gained over the past years.

In hindsight, what were the most valuable lessons learned? Could things have been done differently?

The most valuable lesson learned through the application of STEAM has been to affirm the insight of the school management that all students are talented and possess enormous innovative capabilities and talents, which enriched the project and aroused the admiration and appreciation of the local community and organizations. The administration also showed a great awareness of the students and their quest to find solutions to global issues by employing the knowledge and skills they built.

 

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