Exploring Elementary Teachers', Students' Beliefs and Readiness toward STEAM Education

. 21 st century demands education to promote students with STEAM competencies. Most researches on STEAM are mainly focused on students’ learning outcomes on STEAM, but only few address non-cognitive aspects. It is necessary to examine elementary teachers and students’ beliefs and readiness towards STEAM learning. The purpose of this research is to explore teachers’ and students’ beliefs and readiness towards STEAM learning. The survey-designed method was used in this research. A total of 34 elementary school teachers and 36 elementary school students in the city of Bandung participated in this research. The samples were selected using a random sampling technique. Questionnaires were used to collect research data. The results obtained from this research show that students and teachers have positive perceptions in career and benefit of STEAM learning. Students are actually interested in STEAM learning, but the competencies and factors that support and stimulate STEAM learning in schools are still low. The teacher has low competencies to implement STEAM learning. This is due to the lack of knowledge and understanding of teachers about STEAM. This research is expected to contribute to the novelty of teachers’ readiness and beliefs in STEAM education in the city of Bandung.

INTRODUCTION ~ The fast development of information in the 21 st century brings a variety of innovations, especially in the field of learning approaches (Care & Griffin, 2015;Care, Griffin, & Wilson, 2018;Griffin, Care, & McGaw, 2012;Serdyukov, 2017;Urbani et al., 2017). The presence of technology in learning provides opportunities for both students and teachers to train and adopt a learning framework for acquiring new skills. This learning approach requires collaboration between the teacher and students. Students are required to have the necessary skills as well as creativity. One approach to accommodate the needs of these students is STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) approach (Bush & Cook, 2019;Cook & Bush, 2018;Thompson, Barber, & Bourget, 2018).
The STEAM approach was adopted from the STEM approach which, in recent years, has caught the attention of several researchers in the field of education. STEM is defined as  [59] learning to investigate where learning is placed in context and students are asked to solve real problems through the creation of learning innovation opportunities (Watson & Watson, 2013). STEAM is a learning approach that combines science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and art in the learning process. It aims not only to help to teach science concepts, but also to make students think and work with art and science and inspire them to become creative thinkers across disciplines in learning (Liliawati, Rusnayati, Purwanto, & Aristantia, 2017) The presence of STEAM attracts the interest of various parties. Several organizations have sponsored the STEM transition to STEAM by adopting STEM learning by adding "Art and Design" (Yoon & Baek, 2018). This innovation is considered successful if carried out in accordance with procedures and supported by various parties. The success of STEAM learning is determined by many parties including the government as the policy maker in the curriculum, teachers and also industries (Ge, Ifenthaler, & Spector, 2015).
Most of these studies focused on improving the skills possessed by students, the education curriculum and assessment. However, but only few of them pay attention to the teachers' perceptions, attitudes and readiness in teaching (A.S. . Teachers' and students' perceptions and readiness also students will influence the way they learn in the classroom (Haney, Lumpe, Czerniak, & Egan, 2002;Harlen & Holroyd, 2007).
Moreover, when the STEAM approach is implemented in elementary schools, the Students and the teachers must have good attention towards the STEAM approach, teacher must be ready to teach with STEAM approach, and also the students must be ready to learn with STEAM. Either the teacher or student must be have good perception about STEAM. This research on teacher perceptions is expected to add novelty to research on STEAM and to be one of the references for determining policies on the implementation of STEAM in elementary schools.
Therefore, this research aims to find out the perceptions and readiness of elementary school teachers and students towards the implementation of the STEAM approach at school. By [60] doing this research, it can contribute to the problems and opportunities for applying the STEAM approach in elementary schools.

METHOD
This study used descriptive method. A survey was conducted on the School Year 2019 -2020, that involved 34 teachers and 36 students. They came from public and private schools in the city of Bandung. There are 20 Public schools and 5 Private schools. The data on the beliefs and readiness of students and teachers about STEAM were obtained using an instrument in the form of a questionnaire adapted from Saptarani, Widodo, & Purwianingsih (2019). The research procedure is shown in Figure 1. The question was for teacher and student and was tried on several schools with Google Form.
Before this instrument is used, it is first given to an expert to assess whether the developed instrument is feasible to use or not. Items that are not suitable for retrieving the desired data are then revised according to expert advice. Every valid and revised item form the expert is then tried on several schools in Bandung, both public and private schools. A questionnaire was used to explore students' and teachers' perceptions of STEAM.
The teacher questionnaire consisted of three parts; the first part contained demographic profiles, the second part was about facilities and teaching methods, and the last part   (2019) The category distribution of each item can be seen in Table 2 with the proportion of each item of all items.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
As an innovation in learning, STEAM needs to be further investigated as a first step in determining the curriculum policy going forward. This research provides a basic overview of the readiness in applying the learning. This section describes how the readiness of students and teachers in the application of STEAM learning. [62]

Teacher Perception of STEAM
Each item in Table 1 was analyzed and the percentage of each category was obtained, which results in percentages of importance, significant others, interests, competency, and careers advantages according to the teacher. The percentage of each category can be seen in Figure 2.  The research result of Reinhold et al (2018) shows that school is the most important factor in student career orientation, so the learning patterns in it have high influence. In addition, the research of Blotnicky, Franz-odendaal, French, & Joy (2018) shows that STEAM learning can increase their interest in pursuing careers involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Table 2 is analyzed, which results in the percentage of interest, difficulty, competency, readiness, significant others, importance of students. The percentage of each category can be seen in Figure 2. The relationship of students with learning is directly related to subjects taught using STEAM. The percentage scores in this section indicate low students' interests in subjects related to STEAM.

Each item in
This contrasts with previous researches, where senior high school students were more interested in STEM learning because science classes were very popular among them (Saptarani et al., 2019). This shows the lack of socialization of science learning and art in their circles. There are more questions about the aspects of interests which include watching documentaries and the desire to visit science exhibitions at around 19.4%. This means they will be more interested if given a good stimulus about subjects related to STEAM. In the second aspect, 23% of students describe difficulties in subjects related to STEAM learning. In general, the application of STEAM in elementary student learning can encourage them to design, develop, and utilize technology. However, because it is also still less popular among students, they consider it difficult to implement. The results obtained are different from Kim & Kim (2016), which found that students can develop a complete understanding of scientific principles and creativity by utilizing emotions through the exploration of the beauty of traditional culture. Things that are close to students' daily lives, such as culture, can make it easier for them to adapt to STEAM learning. The percentage of questions about subject difficulties related to STEAM learning is 8.3%.
The percentage of the third aspect, which is the competency of students in subjects taught with the application of STEAM, is 44%. This figure is higher than the two previous aspects. This illustrates that students are ready for STEAM learning that is carried out in schools. The results obtained in the third aspect are followed by a high percentage in the fourth aspect, students' readiness in learning STEAM, by 50%. The research conducted by Bush & Cook (2019) shows that STEAM learning provides a means of transdisciplinary learning experiences, so students are always ready and investing in problem solving as they strive to make the world a better place.
The fifth aspect is significant others to support STEAM learning. Based on questionnaire results, the significant others indicator has the lowest value of 10%. This means that the low supporting factors of STEAM learning in schools. The significant others has a very small contribution compared to the interests, readiness, difficulties and competencies of the students in subjects related to STEAM. The research of Li et al (2018) shows that STEAM Learning gradually becomes a new learning framework that does not have specific goals with subjects.
However, this learning is designed to address the lack of curriculum, teachers and teaching materials that are not innovative. In general, the exposures of the research results are both internal and external influences because STEAM answers all the needs in the education sector today.
The sixth aspect is career orientation. The percentage of this aspect is 90%, a very high score compared to the five previous aspects. This shows that students are attracted to their careers related to subjects related to STEAM. This means that their hopes for their careers will be better in the fields of science and art related to income. Students believe careers in the STEAM field get a better income. But competency for STEAM is still low. This can be seen from the small data of the cloudy Significant others of STEAM learning in schools. So students face unpreparedness in STEAM learning. To overcome this, teacher must make a strategy to make students ready and have no difficulty in STEAM learning STEAM as a learning approach does not have specific objectives in each subject. However, in providing learning experiences in accordance with the STEAM approach, it is important to build the skills, attitudes and knowledge that students will show after they have completed an education program or graduated later (Erwin, 2017). In the next section, the teacher's perceptions of the application of STEAM learning will be elaborated.

CONCLUSION
This study finds that teacher and students have positive perceptions of STEAM. This is evident from their attitudes that showing positive opinions about career advantages in STEAM. These results prove that students 'and teachers' perceptions of STEAM are important.
This study also found that teachers were ready to implement STEAM in elementary schools.
However, some teachers still have problems with their skills and knowledge about STEAM.
Therefore this study recommends training for elementary school teachers to implement the STEAM approach. The problems and possibilities presented in this study are expected to contribute as a reference for teachers and policy makers to implement STEAM in primary schools.Teachers' perceptions, interests and competencies to implement STEAM learning, greatly affect students' interests and perceptions about STEAM. Teachers, who have good knowledge and understanding of STEAM, will more likely promote students to have good perceptions about STEAM.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thank the teachers and students who participated in this research.