INVESTIGATION OF SCIENCE TEACHER CANDIDATES' OPINIONS TOWARDS SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATH (STEM) TEACHING

Abstract

In the present research, its aim was to investigate the opinions of prospective science teachers regarding science, technology, mathematics, and engineering teaching orientations. The research group of the study was constituted of 205 teacher candidates who were studying in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade at university’ science education department in the academic year of 2017-2018. Integrated STEM teaching orientation scale was used as data collection tool in the study. In the analysis of the data, t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used for independent samples. As a result of the study, it was determined that the science teachers' opinions about the knowledge, value, attitude, subjective criterion, perceived behaviour control, and behavioural orientation on the integrated STEM teaching orientation scale were positive. It was found that there was a meaningful difference according to the grade level and grade average that teacher candidates did not differ according to gender variable.