The Attitude of Primary School Teachers towards STEM Education

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to determine the level of teachers' attitude towards STEM education as well as the attitudinal disparity between male and female students. The questionnaire which has 29 items using a 5-point Likert scale was administered to 310 primary school mathematics teachers. Descriptive analysis and independent t-tests were applied to solve the research questions. The results showed that the attitude of the primary school mathematics teacher was moderate and there were no significant differences in the attitude of the primary school mathematics teacher by gender. Overall, the findings of this study are expected to raise awareness among the relevant parties. Efforts from the ministry is a vital need to enhance teachers' attitude towards STEM education and fulfil the national interest in producing a competitive generation.

Exploring attitudes towards STEM education: A global analysis of university, middle school, and elementary school perspectives

“…The aim of Tao (2019)'s research was Chinese kindergarten teachers' attitudes about STEM education and any teaching experience and potential geographical differences in these teachers' attitudes toward STEM education. The major objectives of the study by Kah Wei and Mistima Maat (2020) were to evaluate teachers' attitudes toward STEM education and the difference in attitudes between male and female students.…”

“…Teachers' attitudes toward STEM were determined as positive (Sachdev & Eamoraphan, 2020;Thibaut et al, 2019), high (Alsmadi, 2020), fairly positive (Hackman et al, 2021), and moderate level (Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020). It is stated that there is no differentiation according to gender in studies where teachers are participants (Alsmadi, 2020;Hackman et al, 2021;Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020;Sachdev & Eamoraphan, 2020).…”

“…Teachers' attitudes toward STEM were determined as positive (Sachdev & Eamoraphan, 2020;Thibaut et al, 2019), high (Alsmadi, 2020), fairly positive (Hackman et al, 2021), and moderate level (Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020). It is stated that there is no differentiation according to gender in studies where teachers are participants (Alsmadi, 2020;Hackman et al, 2021;Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020;Sachdev & Eamoraphan, 2020). There are statistically significant differences in their estimates according to the study stage variable and in favor of the elementary stage (Alsmadi, 2020;Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020) but in the study senior high school teachers felt more confident about their STEM (Hackman et al, 2021).…”

“…It is stated that there is no differentiation according to gender in studies where teachers are participants (Alsmadi, 2020;Hackman et al, 2021;Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020;Sachdev & Eamoraphan, 2020). There are statistically significant differences in their estimates according to the study stage variable and in favor of the elementary stage (Alsmadi, 2020;Kah Wei & Mistima Maat, 2020) but in the study senior high school teachers felt more confident about their STEM (Hackman et al, 2021). According to Tao (2019), there was little correlation between teachers' years of teaching experience and their attitudes.…”

Exploring the Relationship Between Attitudes of Preservice Primary Science Teachers Toward Integrated STEM Teaching and Their Adaptive Expertise in Science Teaching

“…Mobley (2015) only measured self-efficacy, which belongs to the perceived control dimension. Wei and Maat (2020) considered a three-dimensional framework to attitude including cognition and affect. However, they considered behavior as the third dimension, which does not conform with the above analysis.…”