The effects of stem activity centered laboratory course on pre-service primary school teacher on self-efficiency and problem-solving skills for science teaching

The aim of this research is to examine the pre-service teachers' problem-solving skills and self-efficacy beliefs for science teaching with STEM activities and to see the level of self-efficacy and problem-solving skills of pre-service primary school teacher in the laboratory course. This research was carried out in Ahi Evran University Faculty of Education in the 2016-2017 academic year in Science and Technology Laboratory II course for pre-service primary school teacher. Quasi-Experimental design with experiment and control group was used in this study. The experimental groups and the control group consisted of 70 pre-service teachers and were created randomly. In this context, alternative measurement and evaluation approaches with constructivism were used in the experimental group. In the control group, preservice teachers were taught content-based courses in the YOK (Council of Higher Education) undergraduate education course definition. In this study, the problem solving and self-efficacy belief levels of the preservice teachers studying with different methods were compared. At the end of the study, it was found that there were significant differences in self-efficacy belief levels towards problem-solving and science teaching in the laboratory course of the preservice teachers working with the STEM activities. July 2019, 85 Pages. Keywords: STEM, preservice primary school teachers, problem-solving skills, self-efficacy.