Designing a Culture‐Driven C‐STEAM Project Framework for Vocational Education

Amid rapid technological advances and a growing emphasis on cultural sustainability in education, STEAM education has been widely adopted to support interdisciplinary learning and decision‐making skills. However, many STEAM implementations remain largely instrumental, regularly neglecting cultural meaning‐making, value orientation, and vocational identity development. To address this gap, the present study introduces a culture‐driven C‐STEAM project design framework constructed for vocational education, positioning culture as the central organizing principle of interdisciplinary learning rather than as a supplementary element. Anchored in the agricultural cultural heritage of the Chinese Twenty‐Four Solar Terms, the study implements a design‐oriented conceptual methodology to investigate how cultural settings can inform problem formulation, multidisciplinary integration, and learning outcomes in C‐STEAM projects. Drawing upon constructivist, situated, and humanistic learning theories, we developed a comprehensive “culture–problem–discipline–outcome” framework that explains the internal design logic of culture‐driven C‐STEAM projects within vocational education. The study articulates the theoretical mechanisms by which cultural anchoring facilitates interdisciplinary learning, value mediation, and vocational relevance. Ultimately, this research repositions culture as a major driver of C‐STEAM project design, extends C‐STEAM theory to vocational education, and provides a transferable framework for the organized integration of cultural heritage into vocational curricula.