The effect of STEM activities on students' academic achievements, problem solving skills, scientific creativity, motivations and attitudes

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of STEM-based Lego activities on the science creativity, problem-solving skills, STEM attitudes, motivation for science learning and academic achievement of middle school 6th grade students. The quasi-experimental research method was used in the research. The research was conducted in a public secondary school in Alanya in the spring term of 2017-2018 education year. In the school where the research was conducted, Scientific Creativity Scale (SCS), Problem Solving Inventory (PSI), STEM Attitude Scale (SAS), Science Learning Motivation Scale (SLMS) and academic achievement tests were applied. The data were gathered from a total of 85 state secondary school students. In the study group; 29 students were assigned as the control group, 28 students as experimental group-I and 28 students as experimental group-II by the randomly. The application for the study was conducted witihin a period of seven-week process. STEM-based Lego activities were conducted within the scenario. Force and Motion Academic Achievement Test (FMAAT), Characteristics of Matter Academic Achievement Test (CMAAT), Animal Academic Achievement Test (AAAT) and Sound Academic Achievement Test (SAAT) were used in the study. The normal distribution of the pre-test post-test difference for the groups was examined by performing Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test on scales and tests which did not provide the assumption of normality and t-Test for Related Samples was performed in the scale and tests where normality assumption was provided. The pre-test of the control group and the experimental group with pre-test group was compared using the t-test for the Unrelated Samples. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to compare the post-test scores of both groups. Finally, the regression analysis was performed for the scales to check whether the scales predicted the academic achievement or not. As a result of the study, a significant difference was found in favor of experimental group-I in the originality dimension of the SCS. There was no statistically significant difference in the results of the SAS scale. Regarding SLMS, the post-test results of the groups indicated statistically significant difference on the part of the experimental groups in terms of motivation to perform research and performance, and regarding PSI, post-test results of groups, there was a significant difference for the experimental group-I in terms of self-control. In the analysis of academic achievement tests, no significant difference was found in the final test scores of CMAAT. In the final test results of FMAAT, AAAT and SAAT, a significant difference was found on the part of experimental group-I. In addition, a significant difference was found for the experimental groups in the analysis of groups comparing the last test scores of AAAT. As a result of the research, it can be stated that while there was no change in STEM attitudes in the experimental groups where STEM based Lego activities were performed, their scientific creativity developed and their motivation towards learning science, problem solving skills and their academic success increased considerably.