Effect of STEM Activities on Students' Scientific Process Skills, Science Interest, Attitude and Student Opinions

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities on students' scientific process skills, science attitudes and science interests in the 7th grade secondary school science class and to clarify student opinions about the practice. The study group was carried out with a quasi-experimental method in the 2017-2018 academic year in a central secondary school in Osmaniye-Düziçi district with total 52 students 26 of which in the experimental group and the other 26 in the control group. The research was completed in 14 weeks (28-course hours) in science applications class. Scientific process skills, science attitude scale and science interest scale were applied to the pre-treatment groups as a pre-test and at the end of the research, the same scales were re-applied. In addition, in order to clarify the students' opinions about STEM activities, the opinions of the students in the experimental group were taken together with the final test. The findings of the study indicate that STEM activities have a significant difference in favor of the experimental group on the students' scientific process skills, science attitudes and science interests. In addition, it is observed that the students mostly use positive statements about STEM activities.