Investigation of effects of STEM activities on conceptual understanding and motivation: Waves in physics

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of STEM activities on conceptual understanding and motivation, relating the gains on the waves in Physics, for the secondary education 10th grade students. In this study, pre-test and post-test control grouped design whithin the semi-experimental research model were used. Students were taught using STEM activities learning method in the experimental group and the traditional teaching methods and techniques were used in the control group. The study group consists of high school students who attends technical and industrial vocational high school and have similar qualifications. The data collection tool used to determine the conceptual understanding levels of students' by the three-stage "Waves Conceptual Understanding Level Scale" (WCULS) developed by the researcher during the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. The other data collection tool developed by Kocakülah, Kural and Özdemir (2018) used to measure motivation in the study "Motivation Scale for Physics Lesson" (MSPL). Statistical analysis of the obtained data is achived by SPSS Statistic 23 program and specifically Independent Sample T-Test, Related Sample T-Test and Pearson Corelation Analysis were conducted. According to the findings of the research, both teaching methods had a positive effect on the students' conceptual understanding compared with the averages before the application. However, the post-test results of the experimental and control groups were compared, it was concluded that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of conceptual understanding levels. For each stage of the WCULS, the activities of STEM were compared with STEM activities and traditional teaching methods teaching for each stage, and it was concluded that STEM activities and teaching were superior to traditional teaching in all three stages. In addition, it was found that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of motivation before and after the application, and the results were very close to each other. This study is important and unique in terms of the application of the 10th grade Physics lesson in the teaching of the Waves Unit in a vocational high school type school at secondary level and the results obtained contain information for vocational high school students and that the physics curriculum of the physics course is not different from the other school types.