Middle school students' attitudes towards STEM and their views on the nature of engineering

This study aims to determine middle school students' attitudes toward STEM and their views on the nature of engineering. The study involved 360 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students studying in six public middle schools in Gazipaşa district, Antalya Province. The sample for the study was obtained using the criterion sampling method, one of the purposive sampling methods, among the public secondary schools in the Gazipaşa district in Antalya province. The data for the study were collected in June when the schools reopened after the pandemic in the 2020-2021 school year. The questionnaire of Opinions on the Nature of Technology (elementary school version) and the Attitude Toward Stem Scale (secondary school version) were used. Students' attitudes toward STEM and their opinions about the nature of engineering were investigated using the screening method, which is one of the quantitative research methods. Statistical analysis was conducted to investigate students' views on the nature of engineering and their attitudes toward STEM. According to the results of this study, students' attitudes toward STEM did not change according to grade level. In contrast, their attitudes toward stem changed according to school type in the 21st century skills dimension. In accordance with the data from the questionnaire on opinions about the essence of engineering, it was found that students' opinions about the nature of engineering were moderate in the border dimension, sufficient in the dimensions of "temporality", "creativity", "socioculture" and "society", and insufficient in the engineering design process" and "subjectivity". It was found that there was no significant difference between students' opinions about the nature of engineering according to school type and grade level.