Effects of entrepreneurship focused stem activities on 7th grade students' entrepreneurship skills and stem attitudes

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of entrepreneurship-oriented STEM activities implemented in the Pure Substances and Mixtures unit on the entrepreneurship skills and perceptions, STEM perceptions and attitudes of the 7th grade students and their interest in the science course. In the research, ''nested pattern '', which is a mixed method, was used. The study group consists of 23 students studying in a 7th grade in a public school in the central district of Van province in the 2019-2020 academic year, fall semester. Within the scope of the research, modules containing a 6-week training process were developed. In the research, quantitative and qualitative data collection tools were used together. While quantitative data on students' entrepreneurship skills and STEM attitudes were obtained using the Science Based Entrepreneurship Scale and STEM Attitude Scale, qualitative data on students' entrepreneurship perceptions, STEM perceptions and their interest towards the Science course were collected using interview and Word Association Test. Quantitative data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the associated sample t test, while qualitative data were analyzed by the content analysis method. As a result of the research, it was determined that entrepreneurship-oriented STEM activities increased the scores of students' entrepreneurship skills and STEM attitudes. On the other hand, there was a decrease in team skills scores as entrepreneurship-oriented STEM activities pose some difficulties for group work. Qualitative data revealed that after the STEM activities focused on entrepreneurship, the students gained more information about the concept of entrepreneurship and their perceptions increased. On the other hand, it was observed that students understood the nature of STEM better after the activities and perceived STEM as a process of creating more projects. In addition, the vast majority of students stated that they found the Science course with entrepreneurship-oriented STEM activities more fun and instructive.