This study was designed as a case study. Participants were 12 senior pre-service science teachers (PSTs), who took theoretical and practical courses about STEM education and socio-scientific issues (SSIs) during their education at a state university. For the study, in the first 4 weeks, theoretical courses on SSIs and STEM education were carried out. Afterwards, PSTs were asked to choose a SSI and configure this issue as a problem statement to perform a STEM activity. Participants were given a total of 3 weeks to determine the issue and prepare the STEM activity, and the researchers of the study gave systematic feedback during this period. Then, starting from the fifth week of the study, groups started to implement their STEM activities in the class, where their peers were assigned as their students. The activity plans they prepare, the field notes taken by the researchers during the implementation of the activities and the semi-structured interviews about the opinions of the PSTs on the use of SSI in STEM education were the data sources of the study. Findings revealed that PSTs found establishing STEM problem situations over SSIs suitable since they provide features such as conformity to real life, having multiple criteria and providing compatibility with other disciplines. Moreover, after their practices, they pointed out that the activities enabled both the teaching of the SSI and the integrated teaching to be carried out. As a conclusion, it is recommended to use socio-scientific problem situations to perform STEM education.
In this study, 30 hours of training were given to 15 science teachers to realize STEM integration in science courses and it was aimed to examine the problem statement developed by science teachers who have STEM education. The model of the research is a holistic case study. The study group of the research is composed of 15 science teachers. Problem statements (documents) that the teachers developed constitute the primary data source of this research. Field notes were used as supporting data sources. Data analyzed by descriptive (documents, field notes) and content analysis (field notes) techniques. It has been determined that the engineering design problem, prepared by only one teacher, can be accepted in all elements, and that it is capable of integrating mathematics and technology disciplines and achieving learning outcome in science courses. It has been found that none of the problem statements prepared by problem-based learning to perform STEM-focused activities in science courses are inappropriate for all elements.
In this research, it is aimed to examine in depth the effect of design based learning (DBL) program on pre-service science teachers' on development of the decision making skills and determine the opinions of pre-service science teachers regarding the effect of the DBL program on decision making skills. For this purpose, embedded integrated design of a mixed-methods approach was employed in this study. In the quantitative part, one-group pre-test and post-test experimental design was used. Multiple-case (embedded) design was used in the qualitative part. The study group for the quantitative part of the research is 36 pre-service science teachers determined by convenience sampling method. The qualitative study group are 6 pre-service science teachers determined by maximum variety sampling. The quantitative data of the study were collected via decision-making skills test. DBL activities worksheet and semi-structured interviews were used as qualitative data. Findings indicated that there was a significant difference between participants' pre-test and post-test decision skills measures in favor of the post-tests. In this study, it was determined that the decision process related to the design challenge revealed from the real life situations were identification of the problem, evaluation of the alternatives, decision applications, decision and application steps.
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