“STE(A)M: The Future of Inclusive Education?” organized by SpicE Academy and European Schoolnet, brought together four EU-funded projects—SpicE, SEER, SENSE, and Road-STEAMer—to tackle one question: Can STEAM be a driver of a more inclusive education system across Europe.

The emerging answer was nuanced: STEAM can serve inclusion, but the process is not automatic. It requires intentional design, systemic changed, and a shared committent across educators, policymakers and communities. Through the lens of these projects, 4 key messages emerged.

Inclusive STEAM starts with empowering educators

“We believe educators are the drivers of change, and STEAM is the vehicle for it” Achilles Kameas, SpicE project.
Effective inclusive STEAM education begins with equipping teachers with the right skills. The SpicE project developed the Inclusive STEAM Educators’ Competence Framework, outlining essential skills across five educator perspectives. SpicE also delivered training via MOOCs, blended learning, and mobility exchanges, and launched the Inclusive STEAM Alliance—a digital platform offering free lesson plans, classroom tools (such as the MOOC resources), and peer learning opportunities.

Equity requires personalization of learning experiences through real-world connections.

True inclusion means personalizing education through context-sensitive approaches. When it extends beyond school walls, STEAM gives learners the opportunity to build on their knowledge of their surrounding community, and the agency to shape it.

• The SENSE project brought STEAM into local contexts through co-creation. In Barcelona, students from underserved neighborhoods joined a citizen science project measuring urban heat. They gathered and analyzed real data, and shared results with their communities.
• Road-STEAMer emphasized the need to bring together different voices, when it comes to shaping curriculum and policy, including industry, policymakers, civil society, and learners themselves. Their perspectives, needs and insights need to be taken into account, to design inclusive education system which connect to society and serve it.

Systemic change must be built through harmonized bottom-up and top-down approaches
“We need a Mission for Education, just like we have missions for climate or cancer” – Sabrina Bresciani, Road-STEAMer.
Sustainable impact depends on structural support, including supportive policies, funding and leadership.

• The SEER project is currently designing a Roadmap that calls for collective action to drive structural transformation. It will also offer tools to evaluate the impact of STEAM projects, and is developing the concept for a Europe-wide STEAM certification system.
• Road-STEAMer is developing a Roadmap for EU decision-makers, which holds equity at its core. The Roadmap calls for transdisciplinary, effective inclusive STEAM education, through:
  • Research on the economic impact of supporting Inclusive STEAM to inform funding priorities.
  • Hybrid learning models that accomodate diverse learners
  • Cross-sector collaboration (education, indusry, civil society).

The webinar closed with a call to action: systemic change is possible, but it requires collective action and commitment—from policy to classroom practice. With growing tools like the Inclusive STEAM Alliance and roadmaps for change in the making, all educational stakeholders will have the tools to shape a new pathway for equitable, inclusive education.