Korean Students’ Attitudes toward STEM Project-Based Learning and Major Selection

Abstract

Citation: Han, S. (2017). Korean students' attitudes toward STEM project-based learning and major selection. AbstractThe trend of avoiding science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors has persisted resulting in a lack of professionals in STEM fields. Further, the current STEM education system in Korea does not meet domestic demands for STEM labor. To discover an educational approach encouraging students to choose STEM majors at the post-secondary level, the current study employed a survey instrument investigating students' attitudes toward STEM project based learning (PBL), and examined the relationships between these attitudes and intent to pursue a STEM major. A model depicting the relationships was proposed, and the structure of the model was verified using structural equation modeling. Additionally, a mediation relationship on the model was investigated and tested. Finally, the gender difference on the paths of the structural model was analyzed using multiple-group analysis. The results indicated that students who were positive toward PBL components (i.e., technology based learning, self-regulated learning, and hands-on activities) except "collaborative learning" were more likely to have the intent to pursue a STEM PBL. In addition, belief in STEM majors' benefit played a role as a mediator. The findings of this study help secondary teachers guide students through major and job selection by integrating PBL into mathematics and science classrooms.

The Effectiveness of the Integrated Stem-PBL Physics Module on Students’ Interest, Sense-Making and Effort

“…Results in this study revealed that participants in the control group who learned physics through traditional instruction had not increased in sense making and effort in learning physics during the real study. Findings in this research are supported by previous studies in which traditional instruction leads students to memorize facts rather than make sense of information learned in class (Thomas, 2000;Han, 2017). Learning physics through traditional instruction, students passively listen, write down and summarize what the teacher says without thinking about the given information (Liu, 2014;Kortam et al, 2018;Aviyanti, 2020) and most of them are silent during the learning process (Hairan et al, 2018).…”

Illuminating Students’ Understanding and Acceptance Towards the Dual Language Programme (Dlp)

“…This implies that DLP have higher benefit on language development than the learning of content subjects. Studies have also indicated that STEM field is less favoured by the students and there is a growing negative attitude towards learning science and mathematics (Kiemer, Groschner, Pehmer, & Seidel, 2015;Rice et al, 2013;Sunyoung, 2017). This calls for a serious consideration by the Ministry of Education in order to achieve the ratio of 60:40 in the number of students enrolled in the science stream and arts stream.…”

The Effect of STEM Project Based Learning on Self-Efficacy among High-School Physics Students

“…STEM PjBL allow students to learn in groups, observe others while doing their own STEM projects, learn from their peers. The group work of STEM PjBL is aligned with social cognitive theory (Erdogan et al, 2016) which has direct relations with observation of others activities in social interactions and experiences (Han, 2017). In STEM PjBL, students have to follow several phases which define the problem from developing and testing the product in order to improve the product.…”