Developing STEAM activities for the subject area of ​​'matter and its nature' of science course

In recent years, the widespread use of the STEAM approach and its use in schools has created a need for guidance resources for teachers. This study aims to develop STEAM activities for the subject area of matter and its nature that will eliminate the lack of guide resources for science teachers and support learning for secondary school students. The study was carried out in line with the technical/scientific/collaborator action research approach, which is one of the action research types. The event development process was carried out in 3 stages expert evaluation, pre-pilot and pilot implementation. To determine the validity and reliability of the developed STEAM activities, the opinions of 5 faculty members who are experts in the field of science education were taken; Semi-structured interviews were conducted with science teachers and arrangements were made. Considering the data obtained from the expert interviews, the activities organized were applied to the students. In this context, the working group; consists of 10 science teachers and 62 secondary school students. A total of 12 students, 3 students from each grade level, participated in the pre-pilot application in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades. 50 students studying at Doğukent Secondary School in Elazığ province participated in the pilot application. In the data collection process, semi-structured interview questions prepared by the researcher were used. The obtained data were analyzed by the content analysis method. The content of the activity was arranged by taking into account the data obtained from the interviews. According to the results; All of the science teachers participating in the study stated that the activities were applicable within the scope of science, engineering and entrepreneurship practices were appropriate for the grade level, and were suitable for the subject area of acquisitions of substance and nature. 70% of the science teachers stated that the activity sheets are suitable in terms of colour, texture and form. 76.7% of the students stated that the content of the activity was understandable, 88.3% of the students stated that the activity sheets used were clear and understandable, and 95.3% of them stated that they wanted similar STEAM activities to be held in their schools. In general, the developed STEAM activities can be a guide for science teachers, they are applicable within the scope of science, engineering and entrepreneurship applications, they are suitable for grade levels, their substance and nature are suitable for the subject area, and the contributions of the developed STEAM activities to the students in terms of cognitive, affective and skills. has been determined. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended to increase the variety of outcome-oriented STEAM activities in the literature.