Examination of secondary school 8th grade students' attitudes to stem education according to the levels of anxiety and attitude to science

In this study, secondary school 8th grade students' attitudes towards STEM education were examined according to their anxiety and attitude levels towards science. The comparison type relational survey method was used in the descriptive survey model in the research. The application, which took place in the 2021-2022 academic year, was carried out with 1677 8th grade students studying in secondary schools in the central districts of Adana province, which were selected by stratified sampling method. The data of the research; "Anxiety Scale for Science and Technology Lesson" developed by Kağıtçı and Kurbanoğlu (2013), "Attitude Scale towards STEM" developed by Özcan and Koca (2019), and "Primary Education Science and Technology Scale" developed by Nuhoğlu (2008). It was collected using an Attitude Scale Towards Technology Lesson. Whether the data collected at the end of the application had a normal distribution was analyzed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro Wilk Test. In the analysis of normally distributed data, simple linear regression analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were used. According to the results of the research, it has been determined that 80% of the middle school 8th grade students in the lower and middle level are not sufficient in STEM attitudes and science attitudes, and they have deficiencies in these subjects. It has been determined that 8th grade students have high levels of anxiety. When the variables are examined alone, 8% of the attitude towards STEM education is determined by the variable of anxiety towards science; It was observed that 21% of them were predicted by the variable of attitude towards science. Anxiety towards science and attitude towards science together explain approximately 24% of the total variance of attitudes towards STEM education. Keywords: STEM Education, STEM Attitude, Science Anxiety, Science Attitude