Determining the attitudes of fourth grade primary school students toward STEM education

The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the positive and negative attitudes that primary school students develop towards STEM education. To achieve this goal, the initial positive and negative pre-attitudes of 4th-grade primary school students towards STEM education were examined. Subsequently, the students were divided into groups: an experimental group and a control group. The control group received lessons using traditional methods, while the experimental group participated in two-week STEM education program. The STEM attitude scale was applied again to compare the groups. The study was designed using a descriptive survey model. The sample of this study consisted of 60 4th-grade students attending public primary schools in the Arnavutköy district of Istanbul during the 2023-2024 academic year. The data collection tool used in the study is the attitude scale developed by Yıldız and Özdemir (2022), which was used with the necessary permissions. The research findings indicated that at the beginning of the study, 16.66% of students had negative attitudes towards STEM education, while 73.33% had positive attitudes based on the pre-test results. After the STEM education program, the attitude scores of the experimental and control groups were compared. The STEM education program led to an increase in the STEM attitude scores of the experimental group, while a decrease in attitude scores was observed in the control group. KEYWORDS: STEM, Elementary School, Science Education, Science, Technology