STEAM Education for AI Literacy: A Systematic Literature Review

Synthesis: This PRISMA systematic review of 39 studies (2016–2025) examines to what extent STEAM education advances AI literacy, using the TIECD framework refined into ten AI Literacy Elements (AILEs). It finds STEAM implementations chiefly develop technical literacies — fundamental AI concepts, Computational Thinking, data literacy — while underdeveloping ethical awareness, creative imagination, creating with AI, managing AI, and designing AI. Technology disciplines lead; arts, engineering, and integrated STEAM lag.

Key Findings

1. 39 studies, dual-level coding into ten AILEs. Following PRISMA, the review maps contributions to ten AI Literacy Elements across STEAM subjects and contexts, plus subject and STEAM-cluster mappings.
2. Sharp growth from 2021 onward. Publication on AI-as-content in STEAM increased markedly from 2021, concentrated in middle and high schools, with a geographically clustered corpus and predominantly mixed/qualitative methods using technology-enhanced instruction.
3. An uneven AI-literacy landscape. Technical foundations (Fundamental AI Concepts, Computational Thinking, Data Literacy) dominate, while Ethical Awareness, Creative Imagination, Creating with AI, Managing AI, and Designing AI are comparatively underrepresented.
4. Discipline-based contributions differ. Technology disciplines (computer science, data science) lead; science, mathematics, engineering, arts, and integrated STEAM have thinner coverage. Arts/humanities primarily support impact and ethics.
5. A revised AI-literacy framework. The review proposes an evidence-informed framework aligning TIECD with ten elements, recommending curriculum and assessment broadening so learners can not only use AI but shape it responsibly.

What this means for practice

• Instructors. Add the five neglected elements — Ethical Awareness, Creative Imagination, Creating with AI, Managing AI, and Designing AI — to STEAM units you already teach rather than bolting on new lessons; these are the higher-order competencies the knowledge base's critical-AI-literacy and Reducing AI Misuse strands emphasize, and current STEAM implementations underdevelop them.
• Instructors. Audit each unit against the ten AI Literacy Elements before teaching it, checking which elements its tasks actually require learners to evidence — a curriculum whose tasks are all coding and data exercises will not develop the ethical or design elements no matter how the unit is titled.
• Designers. Design tasks that jointly evidence technical fluency, Ethics, collaboration with AI, and iterative design, which is the review's own recommendation for rebalancing STEAM toward AI literacy rather than toward technical skill alone.
• Researchers. Report and measure AI Literacy Elements separately instead of treating AI literacy as one outcome; the corpus's technical skew may partly reflect which elements studies choose to instrument, and only element-level measurement can show whether ethics and design gaps are in practice or only in the literature.

Limitations

• The review maps 39 studies (2016–2025) from four databases, and the corpus is geographically concentrated and dominated by middle- and high-school settings, so the element-level findings cannot speak to early-years or out-of-school AI literacy provision.
• Methods in the corpus were mainly mixed or qualitative and instruction predominantly technology-enhanced; because the analysis reports co-occurrence counts and discipline mappings rather than pooled effect sizes, it shows which elements the literature emphasizes, not how much learners gain in each.
• The underrepresentation of Ethical Awareness, Creative Imagination, Creating with AI, Managing AI, and Designing AI is a property of what studies report, so some of the gap may reflect reporting and instrument choices rather than what happens in STEAM classrooms.

Citation

Niri, G., Chiu, T. K. F., Ombid, A. M. O., Ybañez, D. L. J. B., Dennerlein, S. M., Zhou, X., & Lavicza, Z. (2026). STEAM education for AI literacy: a systematic literature review. International Journal of STEM Education, 13, 46.