STEM teaching the subject of pressure in eighth grade – a study of the implementation of the learning model's impact on students' success and entrepreneurial skills

This study looks into the impact of employing the STEM 5E teaching model on the academic success and entrepreneurial skills of students when teaching students the subject of "Pascal's Principle" which is part of the Science class for eighth grade. The study takes place at a state school in the 2020-2021 education and training year in the Nilüfer district of the province of Bursa. The study was conducted with 20 students in the study group and 20 students in the experiment group, with a total of 40 students. The study focuses on the "Pressure" unit of the Eighth Grade Science class and utilizes quasi-experimental design. The study is based on a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control groups. An Academic Success Test (AST) with a reliability co-efficient of 0.835 was specially designed and used to measure the academic success of students. In order to measure the entrepreneurial skills of students, the Science-Based Entrepreneurship Scale (SBES) which was designed by Isa Deveci and offers a reliability co-efficient of 0.76 was used. Data collected from the groups were analyzed with the SPSS 22 software. Analyses carried out revealed that tests exhibit normal distribution. Parametric tests were also conducted as part of the analysis. No significant difference was observed between the pre-tests of AST and SBES. This helped establish that the groups were homogenous at the start. Post-tests applied to AST and SBES revealed that there was a significant difference between the groups. To assess the progress made by the groups internally, AST and SBES dependent t-tests were also carried out. A comparison of AST and SBES pre and post-test data in the control group reveal that there was an increase in the scores. However, when a dependent t-test analysis was made it was observed that there was no significant difference between AST and SBES pre and post tests of the control group. In the experiment group it was observed that there was an increase in the score when the pre and post tests of AST and SBES were compared. Dependent t-test analysis further revealed that the experiment group's AST and SBES pre and post tests exhibit a significant difference. These tests revealed that education based on the STEM 5E model improved the success and the entrepreneurial skills of students. Key words: 5E Model, Entrepreneurship, Science, STEM education