Engineering Creativity, AI Literacy, and Interdisciplinary Learning in STEAM Education

¹ English Teacher, Department of English Language, Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers National Research University, Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 0009-0004-4846-5859
² Doctor of Philosophy on Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Uzbek and Foreign Languages, International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 0009-0002-9260-6722
³ Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages, Tashkent State Transport University, 0009-0002-7843-9526, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
⁴ Tashkent State Transport University, Tashkent, Uzbekistan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 0000-0003-3281-4730
⁵ Tashkent State Transport University, Tashkent, Uzbekistan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 0000-0001-8921-4125
⁶ Associate Professor in Linguistics, Master’s Degree, Xinjiang Agricultural University, XJAU, China, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

^* corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

AI illiteracy is the dominant source of cognitive and skills disability, highlighting the necessity of interdisciplinary learning and STEAM education to strengthen our understanding of engineering creativity in the context of technology-mediated learning environments around the world. There is a continuing debate in educational research regarding whether or not artificial intelligence and interdisciplinary STEAM instruction is an effective tool to enhance creative learning outcomes. A primary aim was to examine the creativity–literacy nexus to assess the impact of AI literacy in a population of English-speaking engineering students in a five-year period in higher education institutions. The purpose of this study was to analyze creativity outcomes in engineering resulting from interactions between AI-supported instruction and interdisciplinary STEAM learning. While interdisciplinary STEAM instruction emerged as the most influential learning factor, AI-supported learning did not have statistically significant effects on creativity outcomes when compared with traditional instructional models. Overall, parents of children with higher AI exposure were more than two times as likely to report observable changes in their child compared to parents of lower exposure groups. The contribution of the study for education is, therefore, not only demonstrated through the structural relationship between AI literacy and engineering creativity but also through integration of the interdisciplinary STEAM framework with the learning environment. These findings have implications for curriculum planning for this educational context for future STEAM-based instructional development.