Development of three stage tests to determine teachers' misconceptions regarding STEM education

In this study, it is aimed to determine the misconceptions of teachers in different branches about STEM education and to reveal the misconceptions of teachers by developing a three-stage misconception test. In the research, sequential exploratory design, one of the mixed research methods, was used. In order to reveal the misconceptions in teachers, case study design from qualitative research methods was applied, and survey research design from quantitative research methods was applied in order to determine the rate of teachers' possession of the identified misconceptions. Semi-structured interviews consisting of 19 questions were conducted with 9 teachers in Siirt and after the interviews, code-category and themes were created with content analysis. Later, with the misconceptions reached, a three-stage misconception test for STEM education consisting of 8 questions was developed. An expert view was used to determine the content and face validity of the test. The three-stage test was applied to 163 teachers from different branches in Siirt province and quantitative data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS 21.0 programs. Percentages of false positive and false negative scores were calculated to evaluate the construct validity of the test. The Kuder-Richardson (KR-20) reliability coefficient was calculated as .61. Item difficulty value was .36; The mean item discrimination value was found to be .54. It was found that teachers have various misconceptions about STEM education and they have scientific knowledge, lack of knowledge, guessed lucky answer and misconception. With the misconceptions that emerged as a result of the study, it is expected that the awareness of STEM education will increase and the definitions will be shaped.