Investigation of the effect of STEM education via systematic review, data mining and meta-analysis

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of STEM education on higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) and career interest in STEM fields (CI-STEM) of K-12 students through systematic review, data mining and meta-analysis. Nine databases were searched with the generated keywords. Thirty six studies examining the effect of STEM education on the HOTs of students at the K-12 and only four studies examining the effect of STEM education on the CI-STEM of students at the K-12 were reached. Therefore, meta and moderator analysis of 36 studies examining the effect of STEM education on HOTs of K-12 students was analyzed with the CMA, importance and prediction analysis was analyzed with the R program. It has been determined that STEM education has a high effect on the HOTs of K-12 students (d=1,136). Moreover, it has been understood that age, discipline, duration of STEM education and country are important variables in influencing the HOTs of K-12 students of STEM education. It was concluded that the level of importance of moderators in the effect of STEM education on the HOTs of K-12 students is age, discipline, duration of STEM education, and country, respectively. During the importance and prediction analysis, based on the inconsistency between the available data, the sociological, pedagogical, and psychological factors behind the studies in the field of educational sciences were considered. When the studies examining the effect of STEM education on CI-STEM at the K-12 education level were examined, it was remarkable that the sample group was middle school students and that STEM education was conducted in the discipline of physics. Keywords: STEM education, higher order thinking skills, career interest in STEM fields, systematic review, meta-analysis, data mining, random forest algorithm.