Investigation of the effect of STEM activities applied in science lessons on secondary students' 21st century skill levels, science achievements, and motivations for science

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effects of the 8th grade science course "Energy Transformations and Environmental Science unit" stem activities on students' 21st century skill levels, their motivation to learn science, their academic achievement in science, and students' opinions. The research was carried out in the 2021-2022 academic year in two different public schools located in the same education region in the province of Antalya, with the study groups selected with easy sampling, a quasi-experimental design with the pre-test post-test control group and the mixed method in which the descriptive analysis of the participant's views was made.Quantitative data were collected through 21st century skills scale, science learning motivation scale, living beings and energy relations academic achievement test, and qualitative data were collected with semi-structured interview form. The analysis of the data was made in SPSS.26 program. T test for comparison of two independent groups for normally distributed variables, paired T test for comparison of two dependent groups; For non-normally distributed variables, Mann Whitney U test was used to compare two independent groups, and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was used to compare two dependent groups. Descriptive findings are given as numbers, percentages, mean, standard deviation and median values.Qualitative data were analyzed by theme and code analysis. 21st century Statistically significant differences were found in the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group participants in the sub-dimensions of the skills scale. Statistically significant differences were found in the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group participants in the science learning motivation scale and its sub-dimensions. In the achievement test, it was determined that the posttest mean score in the experimental and control groups was higher than the pretest mean score in the pretest and posttest scores.In the interviews held with the participants after the application, the students learned about the 21st century. It has been determined that they have different views on skills, science motivation and academic achievement.