The effect of STEM education practices on academic achievement and scientific process skills: A meta-analysis study

Abstract

Today's education systems, where scientific knowledge is rapidly transformed into technology, develop new teaching methods to develop the individuals needed by societies. STEM education is an application that has been proposed in the past years and enables individuals to become literate individuals in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The effects of STEM education based on these four disciplines on individuals' academic achievement and scientific process skills have been examined in many studies in the literature. In this direction, it is important to make a general evaluation of these studies in the literature and to make a cumulative evaluation of STEM education studies. Therefore, this study aims to perform a meta-analysis of postgraduate theses that examine the effect on academic achievement or scientific process skills based on STEM education practices. The study was conducted in phases using the PRISMA flow model. Graduate theses were published in the National Thesis Centre in 2017 and later were analysed within the framework of the inclusion criteria. As a result of the study, it was determined that STEM practices contribute positively to academic achievement and scientific process skills. As a result of the results of the study, suggestions were made for the meta-analysis of studies investigating the relationship between STEM education practices in different contexts.

Keywords

• meta-analysis
• STEM
• academic achievement
• science process skills
• postgraduate theses