STEAM EDUCATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
Keywords:
STEAM Education, Scientific Communication Skills, Elementary school studentsAbstract
Amid the global shift toward competency-based education and the advancement of active science instruction in elementary education, scientific communication skills have emerged as a critical learning outcome. These skills encompass four fundamental dimensions listening, speaking, reading, and writing which enable learners to articulate scientific information and reasoning with clarity, accuracy, and coherence. Within this framework, STEAM education, particularly when grounded in the Engineering Design Process (EDP), represents a systematic and integrative approach to fostering innovation-oriented competencies among students.
This academic article adopts a systematic literature review methodology to synthesize and analyze empirical research published between 2021 and 2025. The review aims to:
(1) conceptualize scientific communication skills as the capacity to employ language effectively to convey core scientific concepts derived from learning experiences with conceptual accuracy; (2) examine instructional approaches in elementary science education that explicitly promote the development of scientific communication skills; (3) propose practical guidelines for integrating STEAM education to enhance all four dimensions of scientific communication skills across each stage of the Engineering Design Process (EDP), ranging from problem identification through listening to the presentation and dissemination of solutions; and (4) illustrate the application of the STEAM-BCG (Bio-Circular-Green Economy) framework as a pedagogical model for developing scientific communication skills through simulated small-scale entrepreneurial contexts, wherein learners engage in evidence-based persuasion and responsive communication aligned with audience needs. The synthesized findings provide a conceptual and practical foundation for STEAM educators to design learning activities that intentionally embed scientific communication skills within STEAM-oriented instructional processes. Emphasizing the Engineering Design Process (EDP) in authentic learning contexts, this approach offers a coherent strategy for strengthening scientific communication skills among elementary school students in a sustainable and pedagogically robust manner.
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