STEM related after - school program activities and associated outcomes on students success and on their stem perception and interest

The main purpose of this study is to reveal the affects of after school activities with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) content on 7th grade students' interests and attitudes on STEM fields and on their academic achievements on force and simple machines lessons. This study also aims to find out the effects of above mentioned after school activities on students' understanding of technology and engineering concepts. The study is designed by non-parametric analyses approach. In this study 20 7th grade students from a middle school in Alanya were participated. The data were obtained during 2014-15 semesters through different sources which are namely; Simple Machines Achievement Test Scale, STEM Occupational Fields Interest Scale, Engineering and Science Attitude Scale, What Engineers Do? Scale and What is Engineering? What is Technology? Scale. Data analyses shows that after school activities have positive effects on students' academic achievements. The findings also revealed that there is no meaningful difference of affects of afterschool activities on achievements of genders. Analyzing the data obtained from STEM Occupational Fields Interest Scale, revealed that activities increased students' interests towards STEM Occupational Fields. The Data obtained from Engineering and Science Attitude Scale showed that activities had positive effects on students' attitudes towards engineering and science. It has been revealed that after application students have had a better understanding of concept of technology than before. Moreover, while students explained engineering in general terms which broadly might cover all the vacations before the application of design process of engineering, they explained the engineering with basic specifics of engineering after the application. It is also revealed that students' understanding level of occupational characteristics of engineering has been improved. Thus the findings show that students' awareness towards engineering has been improved during the process.