Impact of STEM education activities on preschool children's basic scientific process skills

This study is done by aim to reveal effect on basic scientific process skills of STEM activities. In this research, it is aimed to train individuals who question, research, who can cope with the problems they face, and produce innovative solutions. The population of the study consists of 60-72 months old children attending kindergarten affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Gaziantep city center in the 2019-2020 academic year. The study group consisted of 57 children, 19 in control 1, 19 in control 2, and 19 in the experimental group. In the research, a semi-experimental research method was used. In the process of data collection; "Demographic Information Form" which contains personal information about children and their parents, "Basic Scientific Process Skills Scale" developed by the researcher to evaluate the basic scientific process skills of 60-72 months old children, and "Good Enough Harris Test" was used to determine the homogeneous distribution of the research groups. "As a result of exploratory factor analyses conducted for the Scientific Process Skills Scale, a 3-dimensional scale consisting of 26 items consisting of "relating, prediction and measurement" sub-dimensions were obtained. In the experimental process analysis of the study, a 3x3 mixed-design ANOVA method was used. The findings of the study showed that the basic scientific process skills of the children who participated in the experimental group differed significantly from the children in the control groups. According to the findings of the study, it is concluded that STEM activities improve the basic scientific process skills of 60-72 months old children. Keywords: STEM, preschool, 21st centruy, scientific process skills