Creative and Arts-Based Practices to Engage Young Girls in STEM - Preliminary Insights from a Qualitative Study

The underrepresentation of women and girls in STEM is a global issue influenced by various social, cultural, and institutional factors, including gender stereotypes, limited engagement opportunities, and insufficient support from educators. Early interventions are essential, and teachers require effective tools and strategies for delivering STEM education that is both enjoyable and inclusive. The TechLARP Erasmus+ project aims to upskill prospective and current STEM educators in genderinclusive and arts-based approaches to deliver engaging STEM education to children and youth. This paper presents the results of good practices currently in place to engage children and young students in STEM through arts-based approaches. We identified various interventions, their contributions, requirements, and challenges they address. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in implementing technology-related interventions using arts-based approaches, most of which were run in European countries. We analyzed the interviews to identify the main themes that could inspire the design of future interventions. The research offers preliminary insights into key characteristics to consider when designing engaging and inclusive STEM experiences. The study revealed diverse, creative approaches-such as design thinking, role-playing, embodied learning, and maker spaces-that effectively engage young learners. It also highlighted common factors in scalability, replicability, skill development, and collaboration between stakeholders. These findings address two key issues: the need for teacher training in gender-inclusive STEM education and the development of strategies to boost girls' interest and skills in STEM. Future steps of this research will include an in-depth analysis of the results in comparison to the relevant literature on current practices. These will help design extensive guidelines to support educators in implementing arts-based practices.