The effect of mathematical centered STEM activities on the creative thinking skills of students and investigation of student opinions

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of mathematics-centered STEM activities on students' creative thinking skills and to determine students' opinions about STEM activities. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used together in this study. The quantitative part of the study consists of a quasi-experimental pattern in two groups as pre-test, post-test and experimental-control group while the qualitative part consists of case study pattern. The study was conducted with 6th grade students educated in two different public school classrooms in the first semester of the 2018-2019 school year in one of a province in the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. TYDT was applied to the experimental and control groups at the beginning of the study. Stem activities prepared by the researcher were applied to the experimental group students for 7 weeks, while the control group students were taught courses in accordance with the current curriculum. TYDT was applied to groups as the final test and 8 volunteer students selected from the experimental group were interviewed at the end of the education period. The data obtained from TYDT were analyzed with statistical program. It was concluded that the change about pre-tests in the verbal category of TYDT was significant. Whereas the change in the was not significant. Furthermore in this study, content analysis was conducted for interviews with students and it was concluded that STEM activities contributed to the creative thinking skills of the students according to the students' opinions. Keywords: STEM, STEM activities, creative thinking