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We are delighted to launch a new monthly online reading group on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education. This series is designed to bring together researchers, practitioners, and doctoral students from across the UK and internationally to engage in critical discussion of influential academic work that is shaping thinking in STEAM education research.

Each month, an educational researcher will select a published paper (circulated in advance) that has had a significant impact on their scholarly journey. They will introduce the text, explain its importance, and reflect on how it has informed their research, teaching, or practice. Participants will then be invited into a facilitated discussion where they can debate the paper’s ideas, examine its implications for educational policy and practice, and explore its relevance across different contexts and disciplines.

Dr Francesca Arrigoni, Kingston University

Interdisciplinary STEM education reform: dishing out art in a microbiology laboratory.

This work examines Adkins‑Jablonsky et al.’s Agar Art: a CURE for the Microbiology Laboratory, 2021 to consider how learners new to a scientific topic or subject may begin to understand it  when contact is through creative, low‑stakes making rather than purely procedural tasks. The empirical, evidence in this paper indicates consistent improvements in attitudes toward the Nature of Science across distinct teaching contexts, with engagement highest during an ²¹²µ²¹°ù‑a°ù³Ù activity integrated within a course‑based undergraduate research experience (CURE).  While novelty must have certainly contributed to the students ‘motivation, the pattern of results suggested that continued ontological reading of images and artefacts as technologies, that disclose phenomena and structures of  what can be known— contributed to a trained judgement in the students, positioning it as a complementary form of expertise alongside mechanical objectivity.

Within this framework, making (technê) may be understood as epistemic rather than decorative: haptic practice and visual reasoning can support relational understanding prior to formal didactic learning, offering a plausible pathway by which engagement precedes gains in science education. This theory suggests that early, image‑rich, hands‑on tasks can foster the discernment needed to interpret complex representations, potentially strengthening scientific identity and confidence. Taken together, the available evidence and the ontological perspective encourage a reconsideration of how creative activities are situated in laboratory teaching. It may be reasonable to view making‑as‑knowing as one of several legitimate routes by which students come to perceive scientific patterns, with subjectivity—when cultivated as trained judgement—contributing to the formation of sound scientific understanding