The effect of STEM education program on ecological footprint awareness in the age of five gruop children who are attending preschool

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of STEM education in gaining ecological footprint awareness in preschool children. The study group of the research was assigned according to the convenience measure, which is one of the non-random sampling methods. The study consists of 23 children attending a kindergarten attached to a primary school in Konya, where the researcher Works. Quantitative data were collected in order to investigate the effectiveness of the STEM education that children received, and thus the study was structured in a quasi-experimental design. The data were collected through Ecological Footprint Awareness Scale for 60-72 Months Children (EKAY-Ö), which was developed by Cevher-Kalburan and Güngör (2018). Since the assumption of normal distribution of the variables was not met in the study, the nonparametric data were analyzed through Mann-Whitney U-Test to compare the scores of the experimental and control group and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for within group differences between the pre-test and post-test scores. In the study, it was found out that the ecological footprint awareness levels of the children showed a significant difference in favour of the experimental group after the STEM education. The EKAY-Ö scores of the experimental group did not reveal a significant difference in terms of gender. On the other hand, in the control group, no significant increase was found between the pre-test and post-test EKAY-Ö scores of the children, who did not receive the STEM education program and who were instructed based on their usual in-class activity plans. As a result of this study, it was concluded that the STEM education program applied to preschool children in the experimental group was effective in gaining ecological footprint awareness. Therefore, the development of the skills of 21st-century children who are sensitive to nature, protective and seeking solutions to nature problems at an early age can be achieved with STEM, which is an interdisciplinary and contemporary education approach. For children to acquire skills that are necessary for being a global citizen such as problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking and entrepreneurship, suitable programs should be developed and integrated into the curriculum by preschool teachers.