Assessment of STEM Projects: Tacit Perspective of Turkish Science Education

Abstract

With the worldwide spread of STEM education, which is considered as one of the most important developments of the 21st century in the field of education, the question of how to assess STEM education activities has emerged. In STEM education, where many interdisciplinary learning outcomes are applied together and where the learning process is more important, it is natural for the traditional summative assessment methods to lose their validity. In Turkey, the 2018 science course curriculum was updated with the components of STEM education and the importance of process assessment was emphasized, but there is no detailed explanation given on how to do it. However, formative assessment was discussed in detail in an earlier Turkish science curriculum. In this article, discussion is presented on how to use formative assessment in STEM education with the aid of 2005 Turkish science curriculum together with examples from various resources.

Investigation of the Relationship Between Elementary School Mathematics Teacher Candidates' Attitudes Towards STEM Education and Their Proficiency Perceptions of 21st Century Skills

“…While this finding of the study supports the study of Nacaroğlu and Kızkapan (2021), it differs from the opinion of Kan and Murat (2018) that there is a low-level positive relationship between science teacher candidates' perceptions of 21CS proficiency and their attitudes towards STEM. Many studies in the literature suggest that STEM education affects 21CS (Banks & Barlex, 2014;Batdı et al, 2019;Copper & Heaverlo, 2013;Koştur, 2017;Ormancı, 2020;Radu, 2014). However, the reason why no relationship was found between 21CS proficiency perceptions and STEM education in this study may be that elementary school mathematics teacher candidates do not have more detailed information about how STEM education should be applied rather than what it is.…”

“…21. Yüzyılın gerektirdiği beceriler doğrultusunda bireylerin yetiştirilmesinde STEM eğitimi önemli bir paya sahiptir (Akaygün & Aslan-Tutak, 2016;Banks & Barlex, 2014;Koştur, 2017). Bu bağlamda 21.…”

“…Ayrıca birçok çalışma STEM eğitimi ile 21. Yüzyıl becerileri arasındaki ilişkiye vurgu yapmaktadır (Banks & Barlex, 2014;Batdı vd., 2019;Copper & Heaverlo, 2013;Koştur, 2017;Ormancı, 2020;Radu, 2014). Bu bağlamda gerçekleştirilen araştırmada İlköğretim matematik öğretmen adaylarının STEM (FeTeMM) eğitimine yönelik tutumları ile 21.…”

“…The contribution of the studies to be conducted in this direction to the literature is undeniable. In addition, many studies emphasize the relationship between STEM education and 21CS (Banks & Barlex, 2014;Batdı et al, 2019;Copper & Heaverlo, 2013;Koştur, 2017;Ormancı, 2020;Radu, 2014). In this context, it was aimed to determine the relationship between elementary school mathematics teacher candidates' attitudes towards STEM education and their perceptions of 21CS proficiency.…”

“…In other words, within the framework of STEM education, students who focus on real-life problems develop skills such as creative thinking, critical thinking, collaboration, and design (Ceylan et al, 2018). STEM education has an important role in educating individuals in line with the skills required by the 21st century (Akaygün & Aslan-Tutak, 2016;Banks & Barlex, 2014;Koştur, 2017). In this context, developments within the STEM education framework should be followed to educate individuals with 21CS and knowledge (Radu, 2014).…”