İnvestigation of the appropriateness of activities i̇n the elementary school science textbooks to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics approach and teachers' opinions.

It is seen that the disciplines of mathematics, engineering and technology have been integrated into the renewed 2018 science curriculum in addition to the field of science. This interdisciplinary association in the program is defined by the STEM approach, which has become increasingly important today. STEM is an education that draws attention with various activities applied in the process of learning and teaching. Considering these situations, this study was aimed to investigate the suitability of the activities in the five, six, seven and eighth grade textbooks of secondary school science in 2018-2019 academic year concerning the framework of STEM activities and views of science teachers on this subject. As the basic criteria expected a STEM activity; it was investigated in terms of "STEM interdisciplinary integration", "science-based life problem", "high-level cognitive skills and 21st century skills", "teaching methods - techniques", "product at the end of the activity", and "the level of assessment of students at the end of the activities by integrating STEM disciplines". In this study, the descriptive survey model was used for analysing science textbooks. The other problem status of the research, The phenomenology is utilized as a type of the qualitative research designs to examine the opinions of teachers regarding the suitability of the activities in the textbooks with STEM activities. Data collection tools of the research; The STEM Activity Analysis Scale developed by the researchers to evaluate the Science, Engineering and Entrepreneurship Activities in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade elementary school science textbooks in the 2018-2019 academic year. "Open-ended Questionnaire Form" was applied to 63 science teachers to get their opinions about the appropriateness of activities in textbooks for STEM activities. The semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the ten participants' responses to the open-ended questionnaire form, in detail. Finally, the courses in which three volunteer teachers from this group applied the activities included in the textbooks were followed by "unstructured observation". The result of the research, despite the changes in the science textbooks curriculum, these changes could not be integrated in the activities. Moreover, there are few activities that can provide interdisciplinary integration and include science-based life problem. Although the activities are mostly in the implementation stage of the cognitive domain, it is determined that the number of activities that can develop 21st century skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurship and productivity is not sufficient. In addition, the experimental method is usually utilized in the activities; however, the project-based learning or cooperative learning that are frequently used in STEM education are not preferred. Another finding of the study is that when the assessment of the activity evaluation questions are examined, the questions are generally at the level of knowledge and comprehension focused on outcome evaluation, and interdisciplinary conceptual integration is ignored. Also, the open-ended questions were also used as measuring instruments. Furthermore, Science teachers' views on these themes are largely consistent with the findings of the study. When the participants' opinions about the activities of the science textbooks are examined; when the views of the participants about the activities of the science textbook were examined, they mentioned that it is not appropriate for STEM activities, cannot be associated with daily life, and cannot achieve interdisciplinary conceptual integration. Furthermore, they stated that the effectiveness assessment questions are insufficient in terms of measuring interdisciplinary conceptual integration.