Culturally Grounded Integrated STEAM for Sustainability Education: A Three-Round Delphi Record and a Prospective Culture–Technology–Ethics Lens

Living intangible cultural heritage (ICH) challenges integrated STEAM education because curricular coherence does not itself establish permission for cultural representation. We retrospectively audited a three-round Delphi archive relevant to Chinese higher education (18 coded experts; 44, 53 and 52 rated prompts; 2682 ratings) and separately synthesised a prospective Culture–Technology–Ethics (CTE) lens. The recalculated mean item ratings were 3.9533, 4.6646 and 4.6603 across the rounds; 43 of 52 final-round means exceeded 4.50. The 49 Round-2/Round-3 content links include 35 lexical matches and 14 reworded propositions, limiting longitudinal comparison; 41 of 72 Round-2 priority answers exceeded their selection caps and cannot support compliant rankings. The CTE synthesis differentiates cultural decision standing (C), pedagogical purpose (T) and accountable stewardship (E), proposing a use-specific review before the consequential circulation of educational artefacts. This is a bounded authorial proposition supported by heritage-governance literature, not a Delphi-validated measurement model, demonstrated cultural permission or evidence of educational and sustainability effects.