Cultivating Students’ STEAM Competence in STEAM Education: Constructing Models and Developing Measurement Scale in Chinese primary school

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Introduction
In September 2015, the Chinese ministry of education announced that exploring STEAM education, maker education, and entrepreneurship education activities to promote national innovation and development (The thirteenth Five-Year Plan, 2015).In June 2017, a STEM education research center was set up at the National Institute of Education Sciences in Beijing, it aims to support and push forward the development of STEM education, there are fifteen collaborative innovation center of STEM education across China, appraised and elected 79 pilot school and seed school in 2018, next step of STEM education will focus on selected research subjects, incubator seed school, cultivate teachers and construct the featured project in 2019-2029(Sohu news, 2019)).China now faced with a huge population and abundant labor resources, the challenge of economic restructuring, the pressure of employment, and the exploration of education reform, the government launched a series of innovation and entrepreneurship policy to stimulate economic growth and social development (Wei, 2017).Under this situation, there are thousands of primary schools, middle schools, and high schools conducting STEAM education now, STEAM education was really popular among a lot of researchers and educators.The development of STEM education reveals a lot of features in China (NIES, 2019): (1) most people accept the concept of STEM education, but the ability and faith of educators and administrators were relatively low; (2) the supports of STEM education are still varied and diverse, it also depends on the open-minded concept; (3) teaching method and evaluation still need to improve; (4) the STEM teaching ability, awareness, and support of educators and administrators are actually low; (5) the demand of STEM education is large, but the guarantee of resources and policy support are still lagged.The existing problems in STEAM education, for example, the extreme shortage of teachers, insufficient STEAM curriculum, lack of space resources and so on (Wei, 2017;NIES, 2019).
Under the exploration and practice of STEAM education in Chinese school, this research trying to construct a model and develop a students' STEAM competence scale to focus on students' engaging experience, which was aimed to examine the development of students' STEAM competence through constructing an analytic hierarchy model and measurement model of SSC to assess the students' STEAM competence in the real world.

Literature review STEAM education or pedagogy
There are a lot of countries were aimed to cultivate creativity through STEAM education, which are the UK, USK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, Singapore, Ireland, and European nations (Harris and Bruin, 2017).STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, STEAM education was based on STEM education, and integrated arts and humanities into it (Yakman, 2008).It was an approach to teaching in which students demonstrate critical thinking and creative problem-solving at the intersection of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, which was supported by federal education laws, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act in the United States (Education Commission of the States, 2020).The State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE, 2020) defines STEAM education as an instruction to promote students learning in the real world and connect with the standards, contents, and practices in the intersection of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics.Researchers examined the existing STEM conceptual framework, which included core STEM competence, problem-solving design and approaches, disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge, engineering design and practices, technology use and application, real-world and pedagogy (Butler, McLoughlin, O'Leary, Kaya, Brown, & Costello, 2020).But STEAM education was actually different with this framework and definition, a lot of researchers was more agreed with STEAM education, not STEM education, and they gave their personal points of view to prove that STEAM education was really important than STEM education.The shreds of evidence are as follows: (1) STEAM education focus on both process and results.Yakman believes that STEAM programs were based on inquiry and hands-on learning projects of student experience (Callahan, 2017).STEAM education stands for a pedagogy paradigm to emphasize learning process and products simultaneously, as well as pay attention to the learning experience and demands of students against traditional instruction to promote student inquiry and critical thinking (Arts integration, 2019).( 2) it building interdisciplinary relationships through teaching.STEAM is an instruction model with multidisciplinary knowledge to practice students' 21st learning skills in the real world (STEAM school, 2018).Besides impacting human society and daily life deeply, technology as a required subject in school curriculum has its long history and characteristic, which was intrinsically integrated into science, engineering, and mathematics (William, 1993).STEM fields implicate the discipline of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while non-STEM fields include all fields except from STEM discipline (Valerio, 2014).But STEAM education means the interrelationship of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics in the actual world (STEAM education, 2017).(3) it reflects the richness and diversity of intelligence and human talent.Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences strongly proved human talents are universal in a different field, like musical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, humor intelligence and more, that is why we cannot constraint oneself in one particular area and embracing STEAM (Patanella and Ebanks, 2011).

Importance of STEAM education
First of all, the value of arts and humanities cannot be ignored, and it should be an essential part of STEAM education.A lot of researchers noticed that in the arguments.For instance, arts are crucial to human well-being but their pivotal position was always unheralded or overlooked by educators (Khine and Areepattamannil, 2019).As a matter of fact, according to two research, it was revealed that teachers' reflection and action were highly important to nurturing students' creativity in STEAM education (Harris and Bruin, 2017;Katz-Buonincontro, 2018).It could be a useful and practical tool to help teachers to diversify the teaching approach.Arts and humanities should not be overlooked in STEM education, the combination of arts and STEM curriculum provides us more entertainment and social activity (Welch, 2011).STEM learning connected with arts will be a better way for students to visualize and conceptualize STEM projects when they know how to apply arts literacy and creativity in the real world in a flexible way (Land, 2013).Artists believe that arts have its autonomous mission in STEAM education, however, skepticism believed that STEAM will undermine the status of STEM (Garza and Travis, 2018).Art was autonomous and free (Willette, 2010), which laid a solid foundation in STEAM education to support the development of humanities and social and the liberation of humans.STEM education is that it overlooked arts mirrors the features and changes of human society, utilizing it as instrumental value and focus on utilitarian teleology, but forgot the merit of appreciation and sympathy (Garza and Travis, 2018).All of these reveal the reason why STEAM education attracts attention.Linking individuals to the society and living world, makes students care more about environment protection and resource utilization, scientific morality, and other important factors associated with arts and humanities and society in STEAM education.
Secondly, the importance of cultivating creativity cannot without arts and humanity.Creativity is a strength for students to adapt the living world or leading the future trend, which contains an individual to be innovative, initiate an original concept or invent something new or valuable through different approaches, such as space-related/space exploration teaching approach, innovative E-learning and a team approach (Kanematsu et al., 2016).Integrating STEAM education into K-12 education was based on constructivism theory and it can enhance students' 21st-century skills and creativity (Gross and Gross, 2016).Dancing as an integrated part of arts, shape the STEM experiences of students and broaden the content of STEM education, it has a positive impact on students' interdisciplinary thinking and other skills, as well as it can be seen as a talent cultivation models to fostering good quality or 21st-century skills (Payton, 2017).Under the information times, STEAM education generally focused on the practical problems that we faced in society, which produce aesthetic creation that protects human creativity and innovation (Daugherty, 2013).The STEAM approach represents assimilating culture and diversity into STEAM pedagogy, which could improve African-American students' outcomes and creativity (Lutzky, 2014).STEAM education has a vigorously and effectively way to cultivate creativity and innovation spirit for students through various design activities, and combined with diverse social-cultural elements through a well-designed curriculum and instruction.
Thirdly, to narrow the gap between arts, humanities, and STEM education to promote understanding and inclusiveness.There is a long divergence between science and the humanities in history, that is the reason why scientists are so hard to communicate with non-scientists or understand them, and it was still distinguished at present (Snow, 1956) p1-20 .On account of the scientific revolution, Industrialized countries are getting richer and richer, while non-industrialized countries are stagnant, this gap is increasingly widening since the industrial revolution (Snow, 1956) p20-23 .He added that education is not the overall solution to this problem, but without education, the western countries cannot even begin to cope (Snow, 1956) p23-31 .There exist a natural relationship between arts, humanities, society and STEM.Reaffirm the significance of arts, linguistic and cultural rights in the STEAM curriculum through technology tools and pedagogical models (Babaci-Wilhite, 2019).Quadratics, arithmetic, geometry, regularity, and modeling could be the specific embodiment of arts in mathematics (Babaci-Wilhite, 2019).Snow's introduction to A Mathematician's Apology noted the undertones of sadness in an otherwise celebration of mathematics as an aesthetic enterprise (Snow, 1992).
Not only do the arts and humanities need to be incorporated into STEM education but also STEM education was attached with arts and humanities to improve itself and build connections.
Fourthly, STEAM education is a better way to reorganize and transform the instruction and teaching approaches.The STEAM curriculum provided an approach for teachers to involved in professional development, established STEAM teacher teams as a means to integrating arts into STEM curriculum, as well as promote student imagination and innovation as active artists to accomplishing projects through teacher learning community and students' collaboration (Wynn and Harris, 2012).For example, As a cohesive multidisciplinary method, STEAM education assimilates arts and humanities with STEM curriculum to cultivate well-rounded talents (Khine and Areepattamannil, 2019).Transform teaching method has positive effects on students' active learning and motivation (Stroud and Baines, 2019, as cited in Khine and Areepattamannil Eds).Project-based learning shift learning into student-center and developmental learning with scaffolding and multidisciplinary context which engage the student to experience the real-world and makes STEAM education possible to teaching practice (Martinez, 2017).STEAM education means integrated arts into STEM curriculum to connect with reality, it provides an opportunity to jump out of discrete discipline and embraced trans-disciplinary learning (Liao, 2016).North Carolina arts-integrated K-8 charter school launched a STEAM program to cultivate 21st-century skills of the student under the 21st-century support systems of education, the development and the final artistic work of students proved it does work (Maneen, 2016).Infusing multicultural learning situation into mathematics instruction enrich students' experience of life and society through mathematics discourse (Curry and Hanauer, 2014).Integrating linguistics into STEM interdisciplinary collaborative project improve students' writing skill and literacy, in addition to the capability to demonstrate and sale their product, which transformed students' professional identities of scientist and writer in the college (Curry and Hanauer, 2014).
Finally, The benefits and advantages of STEAM education highlighted the importance of arts and humanities to promote the development of the STEAM field and students' learning.(1) promote students' learning.Learning language through teaching science or technology subject within a contextualized learning environment as basic human rights for students from different classes to wipe out inequities and closing the score gap (Babaci-Wilhite, 2016).Teaching science subjects via creative arts and hands-on experiences to engaging students in STEM learning and prompt them to become STEM professionals (Bequette and Bequette, 2012).A lot of studies examined the relationships between arts and STEM education through the qualitative method and quantitative method in experiments and investigation, as well as in mixed research, they found positive results and benefits of arts to improve student performance (Inoa, Weltsek & Tabone, 2014).Through quasi-experiment, STEAM courses exhibit superior effects to students' physical science evaluation than STEM courses (Graham & Brouillette, 2017).In a mixed study, the effects of STEAM education were confirmed to promoted students' literacy and learning ability in a high-poverty urban school, especially to those low-achieving and handicapped students (Matisol, Andrea, Susane & Aline, 2014).(2) benefits for the development of arts and humanities.For instance, music will have a promotional function for STEAM education.Hip-hop epistemology could be integrated into STEAM pedagogy, its viability lies in the culture, epistemology, and characteristic of hip hop (Dolberry, 2015).Considering the sustainable development of the environment, STEM teachers formulate an environmentally friendly project to addressing social issues and resource shortage problems (Jorgenson, 2014).(3) benefits for the development and learning of STEM-field.Geographic information science combines digital media, visualized technology, automatic speech recognition with graph map and navigates to somewhere, such as Spatial Humanities GIS, can be the best STEAM case that infusing arts, humanities into STEM subjects (Garza and Travis, 2018).Retrospect the history of synoptic meteorology, climatology, weather change, precipitation, geographical features, and statistical method to explain how to apply STEAM approaches to cope with the extreme temperature problem (Garza and Travis, 2018).Others like combining filmology, neuromarketing, and medical humanities to create neurocinema simulate authentic experience and immersing yourself in the situation (Garza and Travis, 2018).Beautiful Midden Field School Syllabus as an ecological design system, like summer school or camping, it was a multidisciplinary framework that designed to integrate science themes and culture through design thinking under the background of arts and ecology (Garza and Travis, 2018).Liberal arts education can contribute to STEM learning through a dynamic visualization system and model-centered approach to training versatile talents (Ge et al., 2015).
With all these advantages for the value of arts and humanities, cultivate creativity, narrow the gap to promote understanding, transform the teaching method, promote the development of the STEAM field and students learning, STEAM education and STEAM competence deserved to attract attention.But existing researches only focused on STEM education and STEM competence.

STEM literacy or competence
Currently, a lot of countries, organizations, and researchers proposed STEM education and the definition of STEM literacy.Meanwhile, there is widespread controversy over the definition of STEM education and STEM literacy or competence, different researchers hold different ideas among different countries or organizations.For example, there is divergence on the definition of STEM education around researchers and inequitable problems in disciplines, whether the quality of STEM education is a multidisciplinary curriculum that focused on a common theme, or an interdisciplinary curriculum which concerned about linking concepts and skills from at least two disciplines or trans-disciplinary curriculum which emphasized on real-world problems of projects and students' learning experience (English, 2016).Furthermore, they are much more pay attention to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes in STEM literacy or competence, as well as the real world and problems in STEM education.But, as we all seen in Table 1, researchers are not focused on STEAM literacy or competence, not even to mention it.Through literature review, there are existing 16 definitions of STEM literacy in different researches, the specific contents are as follows: Table 1 The definition of STEM literacy In the era of the knowledge economy, STEM literacy is a kind of ability to adapt to and accept the changes brought about b On the other hand, a lot of definitions of STEM competence are divided from the perspective of disciplines, such as scientific literacy, technical literacy, engineering literacy, and mathematical literacy (Zollman, 2012).Generally, to synthesize different explanations about STEM literacy from the point of the subject are as follows: (1) scientific literacy is the use of scientific knowledge and process, and the decision making of the effects of natural forces, (2) technical literacy is the ability to use, manage, understand and evaluate the current technology effectively, (3) engineering literacy is the capability to apply the knowledge of science and math to conduct research and put the ideal project into practice, to integrate multidisciplinary knowledge to connect several big ideas with the real-life world and problem solving, (4) mathematical literacy is the analysis ability, calculate, deduce, and communicate through mathematical knowledge to discover and express a math problem, explain and solve this problem (Zollman, 2012).
Looking through the different definitions, there are none of them value the significance of arts and humanities, and most of them were only focus on the STEM-related skills, non-STEM related skills were overlooked or assumed does not important.Because of the researchers' indifferent attitude toward STEAM education, STEAM competence was hard to propose and to make itself clear.But the importance and significance of STEAM education and STEAM competence were never forgotten in China, a lot of Chinese schools were very innovative and progressive to implement and explore STEAM education in their school, especially primary school.On this occasion, STEAM education was a better way to represent the specialty and features of a school with infusing culture and humanities.

Measurement in STEAM literacy or competence
As it was mentioned before, there was a great demand for assessment or measurement of students' STEAM competence.First of all, the assessment of STEM education was not enough to serve its needs.Researchers argued that it is imperative for STEM teachers to develop a large-scale and classroom-level test to demonstrate instruction effects and learning consequences (NASEM, 2018).Constructing an evaluation framework for undergraduate STEM education is a prerequisite and imperative to address the weaknesses of the university, as it contributes to assessing the quality, equity, and diversity of STEM education, as well as satisfy the needs of STEM professionals and teachers (NASEM, 2018).How to evaluate the STEM skills of students instead of essential knowledge is a basic requirement to formulate an accountability approach when teachers implement STEM policy in K-12 school (Atkinson and Mayo, 2010).Moreover, students' demographic backgrounds, class attendance, performance, prior knowledge, and admission requirements could also influence STEM attrition (Valerio, 2014).Evaluating the quality of K-12 STEM education aims to build an assessment system to report and mirror the progress or the defection of STEM education, assessment indicator in the U.S. including students' achievement, resources, and investments, professionals, outside supports, and others (NRC, 2013).There are few examples to illustrate authentic learning through diverse STEM assessment rubrics and tools to serve different needs, for instance, criteria cards, complex rubrics (Green, 2014).Secondly, a lot of researches was more focused on creativity, not STEAM education or STEAM competence.One research for the OECD revealed the five core features of the creative mind which were inquisitiveness, imagination, persistence, discipline, and collaboration (Lucas, Claxton & Spencer, 2013).Thus, large-scale test and measurement tools of STEAM competence were not found in any research or reports.
In contrast, few researchers were interested in STEAM literacy of students, only one studies were noticed STEAM literacy, but it was failed to successfully develop a measurement scale of students' STEAM literacy.Kim & Moon (2016) examined the effect of the STEAM education program to cultivate students' STEAM literacy in Korean.Unfortunately, this research was failed to acquire and it is invisible to the public, as well as failed to construct a measurement tool to evaluate students' STEAM competence.Based on its invisibility, the reliability and validity were unsure and it was unconvinced.A school was developed a STEAM curriculum through kindergarten to 5th grade to values the importance of STEAM literacy and 21st-century skills, as well as build the relationship between the language of English learning and STEAM education (Barber, Adams, & Williams, 2017).But they were not evaluating the STEAM literacy of students.Another study from the perspective of collaboration to evaluate students' collaboration skills in STEAM education.As the assessment of collaborative problem-solving skills is lacking and needed, developing a rubric to measure and assess students' achievements and collaboration in K-12 STEAM activities is valuable and significant (Herro et al., 2017).This research only focused on collaboration, not STEAM competence.A newly constructed model of STEAM was emphasizing the artwork, meaningful results, exploration, idea, iterating process, and communication (Carsten Conner, Tzou, Tsurusaki, Guthrie, Pompea & Teal-Sullivan, 2017).Above all, they were failed to establish a comprehensive conceptual framework and measurement model of STEAM literacy or competence.Or due to the sample was small and constrained, or lack of scientific basis, reliability, and validity, which means their research results cannot be transported or referenced.Above all, STEAM education was integrating arts and humanities into STEM education, and a lot of studies focused on STEM education and its impact.But few of them are only concentrated on the evaluation and measurement of STEM education and STEM literacy, rarely inspect its impact on students.No to mention the students' STEAM competence.Heretofore, there are no public formal or official documents or researches that were trying to pay attention to students' STEAM competence, as well as to construct a model or a scale of students' STEAM competence.Thus, the proposed model was raised as follows: (1) the definition of students' STEAM competence was the competence of psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment in three aspects of cognition and practice, social interaction, and systematic influence in STEAM education, which was based on the integration of the standard and aim, curriculum, instruction, assessment in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education.(2) the original dimension was cognition and practice, social interaction, and systematic influence, which stands for the relationship between the individuals, society and the living world.(3) the seven criteria were psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment.
Given all that literature review and discussions, since thousands of school implement STEAM education and a lot of problems emerged, to determine if the students' STEAM competence can be proposed and used in STEAM education and research, this study constructed an analytic hierarchy model, measurement model and scale of students' STEAM competence to create a new assessment of STEAM education.Students' STEAM competence scale was created to assess individual differences in STEAM competence for they are engaged in STEAM education in three distinct dimensions: individual, society, and living world.Two studies were conducted to (a) examine the reliability and validity of the proposed model of SSC to determine if the SSC was appropriate for students or can be used to assess students' STEAM competence; (b) construct an analytic hierarchy model to inspect the structure and content validity of the SSC; (c) develop measurement model to verify the reliability, validity and psychometric properties of the SSC scale, and determine the factor structure of the SSCs; (d) testing the relationship between each criterion to ascertain the SSCs will be applicable and replicable with different samples.

Method Study 1
Participants A total of 1134 educators and researchers mainly from the east, the west, and the middle district of China and focused on STEAM education to complete the investigation.The investigation was designed to collect expert opinions and investigate the identification of the proposed model of the students' STEAM literacy.The identity of participants was distributed as follows: 68 teachers in college, 78 administrators, 31 educational agencies and corporations, 598 primary school teachers and 259 middle school teachers, 57 postgraduates and 43 Ph.D. students.Among them, research invite 39 experts (9 teachers in college, 11 postgraduates and Ph.D. students, 19 teachers and administrators from primary school and middle school) to rating the weight of the dimensions and criterion of SSC through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to construct an analytic hierarchy model.

Materials
The investigation was named the questionnaire of the proposed model of the students' STEAM competence.The questionnaire includes (1) basic information of each participant, such as gender, age, identity, degree and professional title, (2) 7-point Likert-scale rating about the identification of Part 1 definition, Part 2 three dimensions, and seven criteria, as well as other specific items of students' STEAM competence, participants were asked to answer the questions about to what extent do you agreed or disagreed with the three dimensions and seven criteria of SSC, ranging it from 1 point (much less agree) to 7 points (much more agree), (3) subjective question, which was about the individual opinions and suggestions of part 1, part 2 and the overall opinion of students' STEAM competence.
Part 1 includes the definition of students' STEAM competence.The original definition was the competence of psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment in three aspects of practice and cognition, social communication, and systemic evaluation in STEAM education, which was based on the integration of the standard and aim, curriculum, instruction, assessment in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education.
In Part 2, the questionnaire has represented the three dimensions of students' STEAM competence, which was based on the current literature and research.The underlying logic was its relationship to individuals, society, and the living world.And the seven criteria and corresponding specific items, which include psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment with the specific description.

Procedure
All data were obtained through an online and offline questionnaire.Participants were informed consent and promise anonymous through email, face to face communication or social media.This questionnaire was including basic information about this research and teamwork, a debriefing form, main content, and acknowledgment.

Data analysis
First of all, participants suggested revised the expressions of three dimensions, examine the theoretical basis behind the proposed model.Through discussion and idea change, the final definite dimensions were practical cognition, interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence, as the original dimensions were unclear and cannot covering the wide range, or the ambiguity of interpretation, as well as it was regarded as inappropriate and unsuitable.Some constructed advice was taken into account, while unhelpful advice was not incorporated.And then, those three dimensions were the point to the connections between individual, society, and living world, the theoretical basis behind it was the social learning theory of Bandura, cognitive psychology of Piaget and Vygotsky, and the process philosophy of Whitehead.Furthermore, the specific items were adjusted, revised, added, and deleted.For example, in the specific items of psychological cognition, symbol sense was replaced by interdisciplinary contacts, and added with self-efficacy, self-regulated.In the specific items of practical inquiry, leadership and organization of activities, communication, and cooperation with sharing were incorporated into organization and management, the participation interest in practice was added.In the specific items of impact assessment, the conclusive assessment was replaced by processed-based assessment, interest and motivation were the substitutes for feedback and improvements for the reason that processed-based assessment was already contained this meaning.Then the final dimensions, criteria and specific items were formulated, as Table 2, Fig  Secondly, in the process of collecting feedback and opinions, some advice and a few suggestions were raised but failed to present in the dimensions, criteria and specific items.The reasons are as follows: it has already contained in the specific items but they did not know or overlooked; the suggested points were meaningless; the expert just do not understand it or familiar with it; improper or inadequate and so on.
Finally, the study got the ultimately proposed model through consulting the panel, and this model was waiting to be tested to construct a model through the AHP method, as it was shown in Table 3 and Table  4, the results were provided in the next.

Results
Based on the questionnaire, there are a lot of suggestions were collected.Most researchers and teachers were agreed with this design and give some advice.Some of them disagreed with this design and give their opinions, and others posed a few questions or doubts about this design.Through communication and discussion with different experts, research was finally getting the proposed model after adjusting or delete some inappropriate items, and add necessary items.The overall opinions were shown in Table 2. Firstly, after collecting opinions from participants, the dimensions, criteria, and specific items were revised.
And the research was trying to construct a conceptual model with a clear definition of students' STEAM competence.The original dimensions of practice and cognition, social communication, and systemic evaluation were revised into practical cognition, interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence.In addition, other specific items were set up.Draw the conclusion of this research: the definition of students' STEAM competence was the competence of psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment in three as-pects of practical cognition, interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence in STEAM education, which was based on the integration of the standard and aim, curriculum, instruction, assessment in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education.For students, the three aspects of practical cognition, interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence were attributed to the connections between individual, society, and living word.The connections between the three dimensions were shown in Fig 1. Above all, high-quality STEAM instruction should be integrated with standards, learning objectives, and multiple subjects, it needs to focus on build capacity, gathers data to improve the research (Dell'Erba, 2019).Thus, based on literature review, combined with national curriculum standard of compulsory education, national education aims, and the theory of system, the process philosophy of Whitehead, cognitive learning theory and constructivism, through the investigation and collecting comments, after modified and adjusted the dimensions, criteria and specific items.The measurement model was finally set up and the theoretical frame of the model was specified.As shown in Fig 2, the relationship between dimensions and criteria were confirmed.

The conceptual model of students' STEAM competence
Thirdly, through collecting the rating of the panel of importance to ascertain the weight coefficient of the factors.Using the analytic hierarchy process to define the weight coefficients in specific items to construct an evaluation criteria system and an analytic hierarchy model.Through selecting 39 experts' weight rating results of specific criteria to build the model of the SSCs through AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method.Analytic Hierarchy Process was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s, it was a structured approach for solving complex questions, which was based on mathematics and psychology (Saaty and Vargas, 2012).It was used in this research to determine the weight of three dimensions and seven criteria, which was combined qualitative analysis and quantitative with many advantages.Through using R3.3.3 and upload mvstats packages, the results were get to construct an evaluation model.If CR<0.01, the judgment matrix was passed the consistency test.Otherwise, it needs to be revised or deleted.As seen from Table 3 and Table 4, it all passed the consistency test and CR<0.01.The results are as followed: Y=Students' STEAM competence, Y 1 =practical cognition, Y 2 =interpersonal interaction, Y 3 =comprehensive influence, X 11 = psychological cognition, X 12 = situated learning, X 13 = practical inquiry, X 21 = social communication, X 22 = rational decision making, X 31 = creative presentation, X 32 = impact assessment.
The results of constructing model are as follows: Y=0 All data were obtained through a distributed questionnaire to a different school, and teachers were arranged for their students to accomplish by randomized selecting two to three classes in fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade respectively.

Data analysis
To examine the reliability and validity of the scale, the test of reliability (the internal consistency index), exploratory factor analysis was used to confirm the validity and the factor structure of the scale.Basic Pearson correlation analyses were provided to examined construct validity.Confirmatory factors analysis was conducted to provide evidence for convergent and discriminant validity.

Construct Validity of the SSC Scales
The basic information of SSCs was given below, bivariate correlations between the 7 criteria and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ) of the SSCs can be seen in Table 5.According to the Pearson correlations, the discriminate validity and construct validity were affirmed.The research conducted a reliability and validity test of the SSCs in study 2, using the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient to verify the reliability by using SPSS25.0software, and then using factor analysis to verify the content validity of the SSCs.Researchers often use the Cronbach's alpha coefficient to examine the internal consistency of measurement tools (Kaplan, 2009), in consequence of the Cronbach's alpha was above 0.7, means acceptable, 0.8 means good, and 0.9 means preferable (Kline, 2011;George & Mallery, 2003).Among 1126 participants, the overall credibility of the scale was 0.963 (Cronbach's alpha), then it holds high reliability and stability.
Also, factor analysis and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test were always used to confirm the construct validity, and the content validity was examined by literature review and expert appraisal (Catalano, 2018).The latter method was already confirmed.Thus, the study conducted an exploratory factor analysis on SSCs to test the structural validity of this model, selecting the maximum variance orthogonal rotation method, KMO and Bartletts' test, and principal component analysis (extract factor if the characteristic value is greater than 1, the absolute value of the factor load is greater than 0.5).Utilizing exploratory factor analysis, the KMO value of the SSCs is 0.980>0.9(p<0.000,satisfied with the Bartletts' test), the factor loading is between 0.523 0.726, and the cumulative variance contribution rate of 7 common factors is 62.708%.The study draws a conclusion that its construct validity was relatively high.As it was shown in Table 6, the reliability and convergence validity of the questionnaire, all of the dimensions, items, and estimates were above 0.6 except the B1 (0.579 was acceptable).The Z value (Est./S.E.) was beyond 0.96 and the p-value was small than 0.001, which means all items were passed the parameters of the significant test.R-square was all above 0.336, which means the explainable ability of dimension to items was acceptable, composite reliability (CR) was above 0.7, and convergence validity (AVE) was close to 0.5, which represents the questionnaires have a good inner consistency and validity.All dimensions have their own corresponding items, all the factor loading was between 0.579 and 0.743, CR was exceeding 0.7 and AVE was close to 0.5, all of this was under the condition in an ideal boundary, it also reveals a well discriminate validity as the recommendation of Fornell and Larcker (1981).Besides, the residual error was under 0.7 means the independent variable is not related.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the factor structure and validity of the SSCs in a different school.Pearson correlation analyses were used to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity.
A path analysis was also conducted to examine the effects of the different criteria in SSCs.
CFA was conducted in the Mplus 8.3 to verify the item reliability, convergence validity, and discriminate validity in three dimensions and seven criteria of SSCs.Maximum likelihood (ML) was used in the model estimation, as the data was almost normal.The model fit for each criterion was adequate, with significant positive factor loading in SSCs.Although the chi-square was significant, the test was also accepted as the sample sizes beyond 300 (N=1126) (Kline, 2011).It was suggested that the criteria were designed to examine the goodness of fit in a model are the value close to 0.95 for CFI (comparative fit index) and GFI, 0.06-0.08 for SRMR and 0.06 for RMSEA (Hu & Bentler, 1999).These criteria were widely accepted in the field of psychology and education (Zadworna-Cieślak, 2020;Bacikova-sleskova & Bavolar, 2020).

Table 7
The criteria in model fit of CFA  & Bentler (1999) proposed the goodness of model fit are: CFI (Comparative Fit Index) and GFI should be close to 0.95, SRMR close to 0.06 or 0.08, and RMSEA close to 0.06.As shown in Table 7, the model test results show that the degree of freedom of the model is equal to 443, the chi-square value of the overall model fit is 1252.115, the ratio of chi-square degrees of freedom is 2.826<3, and the significance probability value is p<0.000,RMSEA=0.057<0.06, SRMR=0.035<0.06,CFI=0.922,TLI=0.913, the value of CFI and TLI were close to 0.95, and all criteria are within the acceptable range and reach the model adaptation standard, so the measurement model can be accepted.Thus, the SSCs has pretty good reliability and validity.

Table 8
The criteria and items of students' STEAM competence Criteria and items 1: psychological cognition I always ponder over questions, design solutions and methods, search network resources, and look for materials from daily li Facing difficulties and challenges, I will insist on finding ways and seek help, I have the confidence to overcome everything a I will combine different subject knowledge to think and solve problems, build interdisciplinary links, achieve independent lea I want to do more and be curious, invent and build new things, design and modify something new and complex.
Facing criticism and controversy, I will insist on keep trying, defending my design and ideas, just believing in myself.
Facing difficulties, I will change myself, adjust and modify the plan, improve and refine the program, solve problems flexibly 2: situated learning I basically solve problems through a set of the scientific inquiry process.by asking questions and assumptions, developing p I'm interested in programming and write code, and creative design using programming software.I am good at applying imagination and creativity to event planning and programming.I will be based on customer needs and practical problems, exerts creativity and efforts into the iterative design, fabricate an 3: practical inquiry During the process of the project, I will overcome difficulties, find ways to persist in experimentation and iterative testing, e I was familiar with the role, purpose, and rules of safety use among different technical tools, and I will choose the most appr I will work well with team members to organize projects, allocate resources and time, take responsibility, help others and sh I like to make and create something to present myself, which is my hobby and interest.4: social communication I and my team members will undertake the social responsibility of the project, reflect and evaluate the social impact and ro I'll thinking about other people's thoughts with empathy, think about problems and solve problems from others' point of vie I will design a good marketing plan for team work, exercise my sales ability and eloquence, attract others to buy my produc 5: rational decision making Combined with my knowledge of mathematics, I collect data, chart and analyze trends in data change.I will build and solve equations, inequalities, equations, etc., using mathematical knowledge to solve problems in the project I will consider social and market factors such as the needs of consumers, audiences, etc., as well as social, cultural, artistic, s I will evaluate the risk levels and safety factors of different programs, try to minimize all the injuries and losses, protect mys I will use resources rationally and effectively, reuse resources and recycle resources, find recyclable resources from my home 6: creative presentation I'll present the results and processes of the team work in a unique way, and find ways to add some interesting things and id I believed that the external image design of the work is also important, and aesthetic appreciation matters.I will consider the external image beauty of the final project, as well as the integrate human, artistic and social elements int I am passionate about the flexible use and presentation of a variety of visual art forms, and also interested in creating a stro 7: impact assessment I will use my mobile phone or camera to record and share the whole process of learning and growth, recall the most memora This kind of learning activity really helps me to enhance my learn interest and enthusiasm, I would like to engage in science I enjoyed participating in hands-on project learning and exploratory activities and would love to do similar work in the futu I enjoyed participating in this kind of learning activities of STEAM education and maker education.I'd love to pursue careers related to STEAM education and maker education in the future.I will consider the ecological and environmental protection effects and impact in the project, pay attention to the protection In short, the measurement model of SSCs have already shown good reliability, structural validity, convergence validity, and discriminate validity, and overall reliability and validity are at a good level.Moreover, the measurement model has been verified and assessed by researchers and educators in China, which also shows that the quality, reliability, and validity of SSCs were good.Based on the good quality of SSCs, the research conducted a path analysis to explore the effect between the different criteria to test.9, there is a significant positive correlation between psychological cognition and situated learning, situated learning and practical inquiry, psychological cognition.Social communication has a direct positive impact on psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, and rational decision making with four path coefficients of 0.291, 0.282, 0.259, 0.122 with all path coefficients were significant (p<0.001).Rational decision making has a direct positive impact on psychological cognition, situated learning, and practical inquiry with four path coefficient of 0.360, 0.222, 0.325 with all path coefficient were significant (p<0.001).The creative presentation has a direct positive impact on social communication, rational decision making, and situated learning with three path coefficient of 0.217, 0.314, 0.407 with all path coefficient were significant (p<0.001).Impact assessment has a direct positive impact on social communication, rational decision making, situated learning and creative presentation with four path coefficients of 0.255, 0.291, 0.093, 0.288 with all path coefficients were significant (p<0.001).

Conclusion
As Whitehead said (Whitehead, 1929), "Culture is an activity of thought, we should aim to cultivate both culture and expert knowledge in some profession."The measurement model of students' STEAM competence was integrated both culture, arts, and knowledge in STEAM.It also emphasizes the process of the cultivation of students' STEAM competence, these processes were explicitly focused on experience, thinking, and knowledge.As the process of education in Whitehead was very likely to the phase of experience that Dewey used in his book, they are both agreed with the idea that focused on the process or experience of learning speculation, and Dewey took the initiative of progressive education through learning by doing (Blasius, 1997).Cultivating students' STEAM competence was just appreciate the experiences and process of the learning, that is the reason why this research was aimed to construct a measurement model of students' STEAM competence.
In the first place, the measurement model of students' STEAM competence was examined by reliability and validity test, correlation analysis, an analytic hierarchy model, EFA, CFA.It shows good reliability and validity, which means the model was successfully built and can be applied into practice to evaluate the students' development.The dimensions, criteria, and items were suitable and reliable to test students.
Secondly, the consequence in path analysis of SSCs was assured.The relationship between three dimensions and seven criteria were very clear.The path analysis model proved this relationship.In the dimension of practical cognition, the criteria of psychological cognition, situated learning, the practical inquiry were correlated with each other.Practical cognition as a basis to the interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence.Social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment also interacted with each other.The individual dimension was practical cognition, as the most basic thing to impact the dimension of society and living world, each dimension affects the others.The dimension of society was social communication and rational decision making, the dimension of the living world was the creative presentation and impact assessment.Through empirical analysis, these relationships were affirmed in students' STEAM competence, thus the theoretical model and hypothesis were proved to be right.Recognizing these potential consequences, the school should pay more attention to students' STEAM competence since the present research as well as existing literature show that core competence was important to students and the diversified development of schools with a high-quality curriculum.Moreover, the awareness of the teacher was the most important aspect in promoting students' STEAM competence.A lot of programs should be launched to create an educational environment to support the development of students' STEAM competence.Researchers, policymakers, and educators should encourage and provide financial assistance.
The significance of this study was to construct a measurement model to assess the students' STEAM competence, using different samples to examine the reliability and validity of students' STEAM competence scale to promote the students' development and learning.A lot of research find the positive advantages of STEAM education.Such as, through investigating infusing arts into STEM education programs, students' math and science scores are increased no matter what race and gender or poverty level (Rabalais, 2014).Infusing arts into mathematics education can improve students' engagement and achievements, STEAM education is an effective way to promote mathematics instruction and students' grades (James, 2011).Thus, this model can provide a useful and practical measurement tool for the practice and educators.Another one was to make educators pay attention to the development of the student in these kinds of activities and programs.Not only focused on the utilitarian goal of winning the prize but also attached to the long term development to the students and the learning process, as well as to building the good relationship between the school education and real world.To promote the consciousness of real society and realize the value of the experience in the real living world, to help them to construct a comprehensive understanding of the world.

Limitations and future work
For these reasons, this research has some limitations.The sample size was not big enough so the accuracy was not good enough.It was only focused on the three or four schools, and these schools have better conditions, advantages, and financial support to develop the students' STEAM competence, as well as implement some programs or activities.Thus, the suitability and cover range of SSCs still needed to ascertain and reassure.Furthermore, these items may not be suitable for primary students who were under fourth grade for the items may be too difficult to them and they cannot read or understand the meaning, as the items were really long and hard to understand, especially to those students who were still learning words and language in Chinese.And this research was only focused on the fourth grade to sixth grade, which did not examine the students in middle school.Furthermore, it cannot be used in grade K-3.For middle school students, its reliability and validity were still unsure.Although this is a small exploration, it was still meaningful and beneficial.Therefore, the future study still needs to expand the samples to step further to check its suitability with different samples.

Fig 1
Fig 1 The construct of STEAM competence of student

Fig 3
Fig 3 Path analysis of the students' STEAM competence

Table 5
Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations of SSCs in Study 2 α =Cronbach's alpha coefficient

Table 6
Reliability and Convergence validity of SSCs

Table 9
Hypothesis analysis of model fit