Analysis on perception of secondary school students on science and technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)

The main purpose of this research is analysing perception of secondary school students on the science and technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields according to the determined criteria (gender, school type, educational status of parents, professions of parents, income level of parents, whether there is an engineer or not in the family). In this study, The attitudes and interests of students about STEM and their understanding of engineering and technology concepts were analysed in accordance with applied scales. The scanning method (descriptive analysis) was used in this research. The research was performed by 672 students chosen from the subsidiary schools of Ministry of National Education in Alanya. Attitude of Engineering and Science" scale, "What does an engineer do?" scale and "What is engineering?" scale were applied to these students in 2017/2018 education year. As a result of the obtained data from 'Attitude of Engineering and science' scale; Attitude and interest on STEM of male students are higher than female students'. Attitudes of students who have an engineer in the family are more positive than who don't have. Attitudes of students who have higher socio - economic level are more positive than who have lower ones.There was no significant difference between Attitude and interest of STEM and educational status of parents and professions of parents criteria. As a result of analysing, the pictures in the 'What is Technology' scale concluded that students limit the use of technology to only electronical devices. Most of the students agree that activities such as using mathematics, creativity, problem solving, experimentation, brain storming are very important for the engineering. Key Words: STEM, STEM ATTITUDE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE EDUCATION