The Effect of a Climate Change Monitoring Program on Students’ Knowledge and Perceptions of STEAM Education in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Korea has recently started to implement a STEM-like approach in K-12 education, titled STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum, to educate the next generation of students to become creative innovators. As this approach has been shown to increase educational success, it is vital to prepare and develop interest in middle school students to participate in STEAM subjects-related learning opportunities. This study examined the impact of hands-on global climate change monitoring projects whose curriculum was designed based on the six structured inventive thinking (SSIT) approach that can facilitate the development of the knowledge of STEAM content and investigate the perceptions of STEAM subjects by middle school students. The participants in the study were sixty-eight grade 7 students from a middle school in Seoul, Korea. Employing a quasi-experimental research design, the participants were measured on their STEAM knowledge and perceptions before and after participation. The findings indicate that students who participated in global climate change monitoring activities reported gains in their STEAM content knowledge and showed an improvement in their perceptions of STEAM subjects. The latter finding was more pronounced for female students who had significantly higher science achievement and positive perceptions of the STEAM program than for male students. The results of this study suggest that carefully designed projects comprised of SSIT-based environmental activities can be effective in STEAM education at the middle school level.

The effects of STEAM (STEM+ Art) activities 7th grade students’ academic achievement, STEAM attitude and scientific creativities<p>STEAM (STEM+Sanat) etkinliklerinin 7. sınıf öğrencilerinin akademik başarı, STEAM tutum ve bilimsel yaratıcılıklarına etkisi

“…This result is in the literature supported by research indicating that STEM education (Barrett, Moran and Woods, 2014;Ceylan, 2014;Cotabish, Dailey, Robinson and Hughes, 2013;Irkıcatal, 2016;Lam, Doverspike, Zhao, Zhe and Menzemer, 2008;Olivarez, 2012;Rehmat, 2015;Robinson, Dailey, Hughes and Cotabish, 2014;Tabaru, 2017;Yasak, 2017;Yıldırım and Selvi, 2017) and STEAM education (Bae, Yun and Kim, 2013;Jeong and Kim, 2015;Townes, 2016;Rabalais, 2014) are positive effects on academic achievement.…”

“…Jeong ve Kim (2015) küresel iklim değişikliği konusunda yaptıkları STEAM eğitiminin öğrencilerin STEAM konularındaki bilgi ve algılarını geliştirdiği sonucuna varmışlardır. Townes (2016) sanat entegrasyonu ile STEAM dersleri alan öğrencilerin fen ve okuma derslerindeki akademik başarılarının arttığını, matematik başarılarının ise değişmediğini tespit etmiştir.…”

Comparison of Science Process Skills with Stem Career Interests of Middle School Students

“…If Science process skills of students are improved, their career interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics would also improve. There were researches stating that science process skills and career interests of students could be improved via STEM and similar applications [17,35,36,27,37,38,8]. Applications improving career interests and Science process skills of students could be performed.…”

Fen-teknoloji-mühendislik-matematik entegrasyonunun (STEM) 5. sınıf öğrencilerinin kavramsal anlamalarına ve mesleklerle ilgili görüşlerine etkisi

“…Birçok araştırmada fen alanındaki başarı, kavramsal anlama, içerik bilgisi adı ile STEM'in veya mühendislik tasarım uygulamalarının bu değişkene etkisinin olumlu yönde olduğu belirtilmiştir. Mühendislik tasarım uygulamalarının (Apedoe, Reynolds, Ellefson ve Schunn, 2008;Doppelt, Mehalik, Schunn, Silk ve Krysinski, 2008;Ercan ve Şahin, 2015;Ernst, Bottomley, Parry ve Lavelle, 2011;Green, 2012;Lachapelle, Cunningham, Lee-St. John, Cannady ve Keenan, 2010;Marulcu, 2010;Mehalik, Doppelt ve Schuun, 2008;Mercan Höbek, 2014;Mooney ve Laubach, 2002;Reisslein, Moreno ve Ozogul, 2010;Riskowski, Todd, Wee, Dark ve Harbor, 2009;Wendell ve Rogers, 2013;Zeid, Chin, Duggan ve Kamarthi, 2014), probleme dayalı öğrenme stratejilerinin (Lou, Shih, Diez ve Tseng, 2011;Otoupal-Hylton ve Hylton, 2011), STEM ile ilgili entegre programların (Barrett, Moran ve Woods, 2014;Ceylan, 2014;Cotabish, Dailey, Robinson ve Hughes, 2013;Jeong ve Kim, 2015, Lam, Doverspike, Zhao, Zhe ve Menzemer, 2008Olivarez, 2012;Rehmat, 2015;Robinson vd., 2014;Vollstedt, 2005;Yoon, Dyehouse, Lucietto, Diefes-Dux ve Capobianco, 2014) fen alanındaki kavramsal anlama, içerik bilgisi veya başarıyı geliştirdiği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Bununla beraber alan yazında mühendislik uygulamalarının (Barth, 2013;Schnittka, 2009) ve STEM etkinliklerinin (Kutch, 2011 fen başarısı üzerine anlamlı etkisinin olmadığını belirten araştırmalar da bulunmaktadır.…”