The effect of learning based on STEM education approach on electricity misconceptions of 6th grade students

The aim of this research is to determine the effect of STEM education-based learning activities on removing 6th grade students' misconceptions about the topic Electricity in secondary school Science courses. The sample of the research consists of 20 secondary school students studying in the 6th grade in a public school affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the District of Trabzon in the second term of the 2022-2023 academic year. This class was taught for five and a half weeks with learning activities based on the STEM education approach. This research is in the pretest-posttest single-group quasi-experimental design model, which is one of the quantitative research approaches. In the research, the misconception test about electricity was applied as a pre-test and post-test to determine the change in the misconceptions of the students about electricity. The misconception test about electricity was developed in three stages, and the test and misconception scores of the students were revealed by scoring them according to all stages. At the same time, during the implementation of the research, the Engineering Design Notebook, in which the students were allowed to write their thoughts, was used. As a result of the study, dependent t-test and Wilcoxon signed ranks test were used in the analysis of the data. According to the research findings, it was seen that learning activities based on the STEM education approach had a significant effect on eliminating the misconceptions of 6th grade students about electricity.