The effects of STEM activities on scientific process skills, scientific epistemological beliefs and science achievements of 8th grade students

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of STEM activities in science education on science process skills, scientific epistemological beliefs and science achievement of 8th grade students. The research was carried out using a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control group, one of the quantitative research methods. The study was conducted with the participation of 32 students selected with convenience sampling in 8th grade at a public school in Adıyaman 18 of these students are in the experimental group and 14 them are in the control group. In the experimental group, the experiment was conducted with the constructivist learning approach supported by STEM activities. Scientific process skills test ", Scientific epistemological beliefs scale" and "Science achievement test" were applied to the students as data collection tools. According to the results, there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group in terms of scientific process skills, while there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group. In addition, no statistically significant difference was found between the experimental and control groups' scientific process skill post-test scores. In scientific epistemological beliefs,, there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group, but no statistically significant difference was observed between the groups in terms of post-test scores. Similarly, there was no significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of the groups., It may be suggested that science courses should be conducted with STEM activities because STEM activities contribute to the 8th grade students' scientific process skills in line with the results obtained