A study on teacher candidates: The relationship between STEM, literacy perceptions and real performances

In this study, it is aimed to determine the mathematics literacy levels, mathematical literacy self-efficacy, universal science literacy status and digital literacy self-efficacy of prospective teachers who will guide the future. The sample of the study was taken from the Department of Mathematics Teaching and Elementary Mathematics Teaching, which is studying at a state university 4. the class consists of students. In this study, "Pre-Service Teachers' Digital Literacy Self-efficacy Scale", "Universal Science Literacy Scale", "Mathematics Literacy Self-Efficacy Scale" and "Mathematics Literacy Achievement Test" will be used. International applications such as PISA and TIMSS draw attention to the fields of mathematics and science. The concept of STEM, which has been in the literature for a long time, focuses on the fields of science, mathematics and technology. During the Covid-19 pandemic that has been affecting the world for some time, there have been various educational failures and it has been seen that technology knowledge is important in addition to teachers' field knowledge. In this study, it was aimed to draw attention to the fact that pre-service teachers are math literate, science literate and digital literate individuals. According to the results obtained from the research, most of the pre-service teachers have a medium level of mathematical literacy. Mathematical literacy self-efficacy of the participants is at an appropriate level. When the mathematical literacy level and mathematical literacy self-efficacy scores were compared, no relationship was found between them. When the scores of the pre-service teachers from the global science literacy test were examined, it was seen that more than half of them got high and very high scores. Considering the scores obtained from the digital literacy self-efficacy scale, it was seen that the pre-service teachers got high scores from the scale and their digital literacy self-efficacy was at a high level. Positive correlation between participants global science literacy and mathematical literacy self-efficacy; positive correlation between global science literacy and digital literacy self-efficacy; a positive correlation was found between mathematical literacy self-efficacy and digital literacy self-efficacy.