The effect of geography lessons which are planned with the STEM method on students' attitudes and 21st century skills

Today, depending on the rapidly changing world conditions, the skills and competencies expected from individuals are also differentiating. Depending on today's world conditions, the skills individuals are expected to have today and in the future are generally called 21st century skills. The STEM approach, which emerged with the claim of developing the skills of the century by integrating disciplines has become one of the most remarkable studies. In this study, the effects of geography lessons which are planned with the STEM approach on students' attitudes and 21st century skills are studied. The study was designed as a parallel mixed methods research design. The study was carried out in eight weeks depending on the achievements in the natural systems unit in the 10th grade of the geography curriculum. In this study, STEM approached geography lesson plans were prepared in order to help conceptualize STEM social sciences. The STEM approached lesson plans applied in the study were developed according to the 5E teaching model. The study group consisted of 10th grade students studying in a high school in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey in the 2021-2022 academic year. In the quantitative part of the study, "Geography Lesson Attitude Scale" and "Multidimensional 21st Century Skills Scale" were used. In the qualitative part of the study, semi-structured interview forms were used. Finally the obtained data were combined and interpreted. In the study, the SPSS 25th package program was used in the analysis of the data obtained in the quantitative part, and the Maxqda 2020 package program was used in the qualitative part. After the study, the geography lessons which are planned with the STEM approach affected the geography lesson attitudes of students, their love for geography lesson and their desire to learn geography in a positive way. Quantitative and qualitative results supported each other. Though there was an increase in the 21st century skills scores of the students in experimental group, there wasn't a statistically significant difference. However, the 21st century skill scores of the experimental group increased more than the control group. At the same time, in the experimental group students, there were significant differences between the entrepreneurship and innovation skills and the pre-test and post-test scores of social responsibility and leadership skills.