Secondary School Students Perceptions of STEM in Western Nigeria

As the world advances through more and more technological breakthroughs, there is no doubt STEM education is the platform to be laid down for the new generation to get by. Like many developing countries, Nigeria is making effort in the development of STEM education. At middle school or secondary schools students begin to ponder about their career options. Secondary students seem to be shying away from STEM. The efforts made by the government with several programmes have not been effective enough. The aim of this study is to investigate secondary school student perceptions of STEM. This study was carried out in the south-west geo political zones of Nigeria. In this research a quantitative approach was employed by using a standard questionnaire to collect necessary data from students of age bracket 14 – 17. SPSS was used to analyse data. Descriptive – analysis, T-test and Annova test was carried out on the data collected. The results shows that students have high perception of STEM. It was also found out that age, gender and state of respondents is not a major factor influencing student‘s performance in STEM subjects.