Effects of Short-Term STEM Intervention pn Students' Attitudes towards STEM

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the effect of the STEM approach on attitudes of ninth-grade students towards STEM and investigate the differences between boys and girls attitudes towards STEM. The quasi-experimental design with the experimental and control group and with pretest-posttest was conducted. This research was carried out with 67 ninth-grade students (aged between 14 and 15) of a public school in the 2019/2020 school year. The students in the experimental group were taught one area of Mathematics with the STEM approach, while the students in the control group were taught in the traditional way. In addition, a questionnaire to measure students attitudes towards STEM was distributed to both groups in the form of pretest and a posttest. The results showed that the STEM intervention had a positive effect seen in the increase of positive attitudes towards STEM in the experimental group. The results also showed that girls had more positive attitudes than boys.

Keywords

• stem intervention
• stem approach
• attitudes towards stem
• attitudes toward mathematics
• ninth-grade student