Developing students' scientific process skills and critical thinking skills through STEM activities in early childhood

The aim of this study is to improve the science process skills and critical thinking skills of 60-72-month-old children attending preschool education through design-based STEM education activities in early childhood. Action research design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the study. The participants of the study consisted of 15 children aged 60-72 months receiving preschool education. In this research, the purposeful sampling method was chosen because it was thought to be appropriate for the problem situation and in-depth information was desired to be obtained. Within the scope of the research, the researcher and the consultant developed a Graded Scale for Measuring Scientific Process Skills and a Critical Thinking Skill Rubric to evaluate the applications made by the students and used them as data collection tools of the research. With this rubric and graded scale, the students' work each week was evaluated and thus, the development in the students was tried to be revealed. For the research, 8 design-based STEM scenarios based on the 5E learning model were prepared and implemented. The research was conducted between March 6 and May 2, 2023 of the 2022-2023 academic year. During the implementation process, students' work was scored by two different raters. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Consistency, credibility, transferability and confirmability methods were used to ensure validity and reliability in the study. According to the findings obtained in the first week of the study, it was determined that the students were not sufficient in the sub-skills of predicting, observing, sorting and classifying, measuring and inferring of scientific process skills. Likewise, it was determined that the sub-skills of critical thinking skills such as explaining, predicting, interpreting, establishing cause and effect relationships, making inferences and summarizing were not sufficient. As a result of the activities implemented every week within the scope of the research, it was observed that students improved in the sub-dimensions of scientific process skills such as predicting, observing, sorting and classifying, measuring, inferring and critical thinking skills such as explaining, predicting, interpreting, establishing cause and effect relationships, making inferences and summarizing. During the research process, it was observed that students were happy, enjoyed and interested in doing STEM applications and that the problems experienced in the first week during the applications decreased in the last weeks. Various suggestions were made based on the research results.