Evaluation of Elementary School Fourth Grade Students' Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) Attitudes in Terms of Various Variables

Abstract

With the increasing importance of interdisciplinary studies in today's developing world of knowledge, innovative educational approaches have started to be adopted in teaching programs in this direction. One of the innovative training approaches is STEM education. Turkey's 2011 and 2015 TIMSS is analyzed according to the level of proficiency in mathematics and science performance in the application of mathematics and science shows that a majority of elementary school fourth grade students' have access yet to the level of mid-level talent. STEM education has an important place in order to change the results obtained and to educate the individuals needed in the future. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine the levels of attitude towards STEM of the fourth grade elementary school students. In this study, descriptive survey model, which is one of the quantitative research designs, was used to determine STEM attitude levels of fourth grade students. The research was conducted in the spring semester of 2018-2019 academic years. Turkey is located south of the working group of the research and studying in medium socio-economic level in state schools from fourth grade to create 322 primary school students. STEM Attitude Scale was used as data collection tool in the study. STEM Attitude Scale was developed by Guzey, Harwell and Moore (2014) and adapted to Turkish language by Aydın, Saka and Guzey (2017). Frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation values and difference tests were used to analyze the data. Although STEM attitude elementary school fourth grade students were investigated, it was determined that STEM attitudes were at a good level in agreement with the students although they did not experience any STEM application that integrated science, engineering, mathematics and technology. While STEM attitudes of the students did not differ according to gender, pre-school education, career choice and father education level, it was determined that there was a significant difference according to mother education level.