Evaluate the Attıtudes of the Pre-Servıce Teachers towards STEM and STEM’s Sub Dımensıons

Abstract

As the importance of interdisciplinary studies is on the rise, countries have developed innovative educational approaches. One of these innovative approaches is STEM. STEM focuses on interdisciplinary cooperation, systematic thinking, openness to communication, ethical values, research, production, creativity and problems, focusing on the intersection of knowledge and skills in science, technology, mathematics and engineering, it is a new learning teaching approach that aims to gain the ability to solve. In this context, the aim of this study is to evaluate the attitudes of the pre-service teachers towards STEM and STEM’s sub dimensions. Therefore; it was used as a data collection tool from attitude scale for Stem and Stem's sub dimensions developed by Keles, Kiremit and Aktamis (2017). In the data collection tool, 5 scales were developed in order to reveal the existence of the relationship between pre-service teachers' attitudes towards STEM and their attitudes towards; science, technology, mathematics and engineering. The related scale was applied to 204 pre-service teachers in various departments of the Faculty of Education at Sakarya University. In the research, the necessary correlations were made by considering the demographic characteristics such as gender, age and class of teacher candidates. The overall average and standard deviation values are taken into account, when explaining the data differences for the sub-dimensions of the scale. According to the results obtained from the relevant data collection tool, when pre-service teachers' attitudes towards STEM and STEM sub-dimensions were evaluated; especially in the Mathematics and Engineering dimensions, it was revealed that their attitudes were more positive and they were indecisive in other dimensions (Science and Technology). As a result, it is thought that the acceptance of STEM method by teacher candidate, which is an innovative educational approach of the research results, will contribute to the literature and the future studies in this field.