Investigation of the effect of STEM applications on the scientific process skills of pre-school teachers

In recent years, the rapid developments in the field of technology require that people of all ages keep up with this change, and it is necessary to provide education and trainings in this direction. Therefore, it is important to meet with the subjects of science technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at a young age and to make applications for these subjects. For this purpose, it is seen that STEM trainings are given in preschool period. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of STEM applications on 21st century skills of pre-school teachers on scientific process skills, to examine the pre-school teachers' awareness of STEM education and their orientation towards STEM education. For this purpose, an application was carried out with the participation of 50 preschool teachers working in the province of Gaziantep. Shapiro Wilk Normality Test was performed considering the number of sampling.The data were collected by using the SPSS 24.0 package program. Dependent groups t-test and independent groups t-test were used to analyze the data. According to the results of the study, it has been found that STEM education applications are more effective than inductive science education of in the development of scientific process skills of pre-school teachers. İt has been revealed that STEM awareness and STEM teaching orientations of pre-school teachers are "high". While STEM awareness of pre-school teachers does not differ by gender, there is a negative relationship between STEM awareness and professional seniority. In addition, there is no difference between the orientation of STEM education according to the gender and professional seniority of teachers.