Türkiye’de STEM Eğitimi Üzerine Yapılan Araştırmaların Durumu Üzerine Bir Çalışma

Abstract

Science and technology have been changed very rapidly in the 21st century. This change in science and technology has made it necessary for people to gain different skills.These skills can be listed as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and effective usage of technology, information management, cooperation and communication. Some teaching models are needed to enable students to acquire and develop these skills. STEM is an acronym for the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math; and includes effective integration of them STEM education, which aims to enable students to transfer the theoretical knowledge that they learn in school to daily life, to handle different disciplines as a whole and to gain skills along with knowledge, has started to become popular recently. In this study, it is aimed to examine the articles and graduate theses in national literature about STEM education since 2010. Within the scope of this aim of the study, 45 master and doctoral theses and 52 journal articles which are reached from the national academic data base (ULAKBIM) and Higher Education Institution National Thesis Centre (YÖK) were selected for analysis. The studies were analyzed in terms of publication year, the language of publication, research methods, dependent variables, data collection tools, sampling groups, data analysis methods and represented with tables. With the findings of this research, it is expected to give an overview of the studies on STEM education in our country and to shed light on the new studies.

Effects of Workshops on the Early Childhood Educators' Perceptions of STEM Practices

“…In this regard, it can be argued that the significant change in preschool teachers' perceptions about early STEM education from pre to post-test in this study is parallel with the findings of the study by Alade, Lauricella, Beaudoin-Ryan and Wartelle (2016), Aldemir and Kermani (2017), Bers, Seddighin and Sullivan (2013), Dejonckheere, Wit, Keere and Vervaet (2016), Kermani and Aldemir (2015), and Master, Cheryan and Meltzoff (2017). The results of the studies about the effects of STEM workshops on secondary school teachers' beliefs, knowledge or practice are also in line with the findings of this study (Gardner, Glassmeyer & Worthy, 2019;Altuger-Genc, & Issapour, 2015;Çavaş, Yar, Bula Turuplu, & Gürcan, 2019;Yıldırım, 2020) Another comparison can be made with the qualitative studies that reveal the positive change in the scope of participant teachers' perceptions (Bozkurt Altan & Ercan, 2016;Doğan & Saraçoğlu, 2019;Özbilen, 2018;Yıldırım 2018;Ring, Dare, Crotty & Roehrig, 2017). The contribution of this study is that it provides the opportunity to articulate the significance in numbers.…”

“…Although most of the participant teachers informed that they have already had a level of information what STEM approach is, the majority has declared that they had learned about the philosophy of the STEM approach in early childhood, why it is necessary, how it can be practiced with young children, the methodology of implementation including the planning, implementation and evaluation phases or had the chance to become aware of some misunderstandings they had. There are national and international studies pointing out the necessity of equipping teachers in STEM subjects and methods of integrating them for an effective STEM education (Eroğlu & Bektaş, 2016;Chen, Huang & Wu, 2020;Çavaş, Yar, Bula Turuplu & Gürcan, 2019;Esen, Gümüşer, Ayverdi & Avcu, 2019;Havice, Havice, Waugaman & Walker, 2018;Kalemkuş, 2019;Siew, Amir & Chong, 2015;Toma & Greca, 2018;Uğraş & Genç, 2018;Yıldırım, 2020). The participant preschool teachers' priority in manifesting the effects of STEM workshop underpin that the workshop they participated contributed to their knowledge of STEM subjects and helped to deepen their understandings of the ways to apply appropriately what they learned.…”

“…The last decade witnessed a growing number of workshops for teachers who are interested in their professional developments on various subjects and STEM education is one of them (Chen, Huang & Wu, 2020;Nadelson, Seifert, Moll & Coats, 2012;Havice, Havice, Waugaman, & Walker, 2018). When the target group of STEM workshops offered for teachers is analyzed, it is seen that most of them address the elementary or high school level (Altuger-Genc, & Issapour, 2015;Çavaş, Yar, Bula Turuplu, & Gürcan, 2019;Yıldırım, 2020). Considering the emphasis on the early start for STEM practices, it is recommended that the workshops should be planned to target the same period.…”

The Methodological Quality of Experimental STEM Education Articles Published in Scholarly Journals from 2014 to 2020

“…Although plenty of researchers conducted content analysis studies to determine the trends in STEM education research (e.g., Aydın Günbatar & Tabar, 2019;Brown, 2012;Çavaş et al, 2020;Çevik, 2018;Daşdemir et al, 2018;Elmalı & Balkan Kıyıcı, 2017;Kaya & Ayar, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Mizell & Brown, 2016), there is a dearth of studies that explore the methodological quality of educational research articles published in refereed journals (e.g., Horton et al, 1993;Shaver & Norton, 1980;Sung et al, 2019;Wallen & Fraenkel, 1988). What is more, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies that investigate the methodological quality of experimental research articles on STEM education.…”

Review of STEM Education in K-12 Education in Turkey

“…Programın hedefleri doğrultusunda en son olarak elde edilecek ürünlerin ülke sanayisine ve ekonomisine katkı yapması beklenmektedir. Programda yer alan hedeflere ulaşabilmek için Türkiye'de STEM eğitimi üzerine yürütülen çalışmaların sayısında son yıllarda artış olduğu birçok araştırmacı tarafından vurgulanmaktadır (Çavaş, Ayar, Turuplu ve Gürcan, 2020;Çevik 2017;Herdem ve Ünal, 2018). Dolayısıyla, Türkiye'de STEM eğitimine yönelik genel eğilimin belirlenmesi için son yıllarda yürütülen araştırmaların incelendiği çalışmalara ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır.…”