Elementary school teachers' STEM awareness and their views about STEM education practice

The aim of this study was to determine the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) awareness levels of elementary school teachers, to examine the change of STEM education awareness according to gender, professional seniority and graduated faculty type and to detect the opinions of teachers about the practices of STEM education. The study is a descriptive study and has relational screening model. Quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were used to collect data. The "STEM Awareness Scale", which was developed by Buyruk and Korkmaz (2016) was used as the quantitative data collection tool. The scale is a five point likert scale. The validity and reliability studies of the scale were applied to 197 elementary school teachers working in Antalya province. For the qualitative data, "STEM Education Elementary School Teacher Semi-Structured Interview Form", which consists of 15 questions and was developed by the researchers, was applied to 15 teachers. According to the result of the research, it was determined that the classroom teachers had high awareness level regarding STEM and this situation does not statistically differ according to gender, professional seniority and the type of the faculty. In consequence of the analysis of the qualitative data, it was concluded that classroom teachers have a positive opinion about STEM education practices.