Page 18 - Toy & Hobby Dec-Jan 2020

STEAM
PLAYING TO LEARN
“Let’s take the Nostalgist as an example,”
she says. “Basically, it’ll be someone’s job to work with older people to collate or curate their memories and thoughts into a format that they could reflect on and enjoy.
“That sounds quite futuristic – we’re talking about curating memories and ideas – and we probably could be using graphics and imagery
to do that, but yet we’re telling the story of that person, so it’s just like the biographer that we’ve had and known and loved for however many years – for as long as we’ve been around really,” she says.
While some of the jobs of the future extend and morph roles that humans do now, others address issues we are contemplating and planning for today, White notes.
“The Cricket Farmer I think is a really lovely example.
“The Cricket Farmer is a very urban-focused position, it’s very entrepreneurial, but it also throws up questions around our future protein source and ideas around food.
“So it may be that – and not that we snack on crickets – but that crickets’ powder or some form of cricket becomes our major protein source – be it in shakes or some other kind of processed food.
“So there’s lots of current issues that you can unpack from just exploring the jobs and their descriptions,” she says.
So what impact do toys and early-engagement with STEAM-based ideas have on young people and their ability to take up the jobs of the future?
White says that research indicates that there is a strong link between early engagement and interest in STEAM subjects.
“Literature is clear that engagement early on in STEAM ideas – be it skills or just the general understandings – is really important for those young people to have future interest and the possibility of choice.
“Some of this could be taken up through the idea of play-based approaches in the early years.
“We know early engagement with STEAM ideas has an impact and so putting those two together and thinking about the future of work, especially with the focus and the findings that came out of our project, really have it make a lot of sense,” she says.
Implementing that theory in the real world is Ben Newsome and his team at Fizzics Education.
For 15 years the outreach program has been delivering science programs to kids from preschool to year 10.
To date, Fizzics Education has engaged with two million kids and reaches approximately 350,000 kids a year.
Newsome says that approaches to STEAM subjects in the classroom is varied across Australia.
“Some schools are smashing it and they’ve got a dedicated team who have all the resources, and they’ve put some time into planning out exactly what it’ll look like.
“Others are just coming to grips with what the STEM acronym means – ‘what is STEAM or STREAM or some other contortion of it? And what does it actually mean in practice for the learner on the ground?’” he says.
great, awesome, shiny toy that I can’t use.’ “So what matters is having a chat with
experienced teachers at all levels and principles to say, ‘what is it you actually need?’
“I wouldn’t just listen to one particular sector [either]. Talk to metropolitan, regional, an independent school or a public school. They
all have different implementations of these resources in their classroom,” he says.
White agrees and says that the toy industry could work with the education sector to bring these subjects to life.
“I think possibly the toy industry could lift its sights to facilitating STEAM thinking in a gamified way through toys and applications of tools, to really provide ways for those individual and quite motivated young people to engage with science and maths ideas.
Because of this varied approach, Newsome says that toys that teach STEAM principles help to foster and strengthen engagement and interest in these areas.
“A lot of people talk about computational thinking is a thing that they want kids to have by the time they graduate high school,” he says.
“But computational thinking
needs kids to get in front of something to actually do it!
“So having those toys can make a huge difference.
“It doesn’t have to be coding either. Anything that shows a science topic in any way – whether it’s light, sound, movement, energy change – whatever it is, those things can be harnessed by teachers to teach all sorts of contexts,” he explains.
Newsome goes further to say that the toy industry has an opportunity to work with teachers to create STEAM toys that can be used in the classroom.
“Consider linking more closely with the education sector in terms of, ‘what do you want us to build? What do you want us to make?’
“Often we’ll see fantastic resources that have been well thought out but they don’t meet syllabus outcomes. The teacher will say, ‘that’s a
“It doens’t have to be coding either. Anything that shows a science topic in any way can be harnessed by teachers.”
“I think beyond that there’s a gender perspective that’s worth taking up,” she notes.
“Because I think socially kids learn that girls aren’t good at maths and that girls aren’t good at physics and they live into the social constructions of that idea.
“So if we work it – and I think the toy industry has a responsibility and takes it
up largely very well – to think about that inculturation process and to possibly not enforce those gender norms,” she says.
The research is clear that early engagement with STEAM-based activities, toys and ideas helps to foster interest in these areas. With these skills only becoming more important for the workforce in the future, it’s important that your toy business is across the products that are available in this category. ❉
18 TOY & HOBBY RETAILER NOVEMBER / DECEMBER / JANUARY 2020