Determination and evaluation of student skill levels in innovative science education approaches

The education given in schools is a process that prepares students for daily life, provides basic skills to overcome the difficulties they encounter, and creates desired changes in the individual's behavior in line with the achievements. This process has an interdisciplinary structure. The 21st century affects the education world both with the innovations and changes it brings and the increase and changes in the skills that individuals should have. This generation, also called Z age individuals, is actually faced with an information bombardment. With the prominence of interdisciplinary approaches, individuals who cover different perspectives such as STEM, Industry 4.0 and entrepreneurship, highlight high-level mental skills and use technology in all areas of their lives, will be able to keep up with the times. The use of classical assessment and evaluation methods in the measurement and evaluation of high-level mental skills is not sufficient in terms of content and purpose. Especially with the implementation of the STEM education approach, this problem is exacerbated. Within the scope of the study, it is aimed to create a tool that will evaluate the high-level mental skills that are tried to be gained by the students with innovative educational approaches, the level of using scientific inquiry methods, the ability to interpret the findings scientifically and the level of gaining 21st century skills. A mixed model was used in the study. First of all, sitatus analysis was conducted with 379 teachers., A science skill test was created according to the findings and applied to 421 students and analyzed in accordance with the classical test theory. It has been determined that the achievement test is difficult in terms of level and has high discrimination. The relationships between test results and teacher observations and student attitudes were also examined. In the last stage of the thesis, the scale was applied to 159 students and confirmatory factor analysis was performed. As a result, a high correlation was found between the science skill test results and observation-based scientific process skills, life skills, twenty-first century skills, levels of using high-level mental skills, STEM at cognitive level and STEM skills at practice level. It has been seen that the prepared achievement test works for its purpose.