Awareness and self-efficacy of pre-service science teachers about STEM Education: A qualitative study

STEM is an acronym formed from combining the initials of the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. STEM education is an integrated approach that joins all the sciences mentioned, in the context of real-life (Bybee, 2010). From preschool to higher education, STEM brings life-related interdisciplinary experience and skills and prepares students for knowledge-based economics (National Research Council [NRC], 2011). The aim of STEM, which consists of four disciplines, is to provide students with a learning environment to apply the knowledge and skills required for the 21st century (Bybee, 2013; Sanders, 2009). Furthermore, STEM education brings different fields together and provides multi-dimensional learning with an interdisciplinary approach (Smith & Karr-Kidwell, 2000).

With its wide knowledge base, STEM can have a positive effect on the self-confidence of the students as well as contribute to their training towards technological literacy (Morrison, 2006). STEM is a new educational approach that aims to provide students with the skills of interdisciplinary cooperation, systematic thinking, being open to communication, having ethical values, research, production, creativity, and solving problems in the most appropriate way (Bybee, 2010). STEM education has had a serious impact in the classroom over the past two decades (Banks & Barlex, 2014). This situation led to the need for both in-service and pre-service teachers to learn the STEM approach.

As it is understood that the priority in increasing the quality of education is the high qualifications of teachers (Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007), researchers have become more concerned with the professional development of teacher candidates (Moon, Lee & Xu, 2021). Developing pre-service teachers' skills in STEM fields in teacher education and ensuring integration of these fields is a phenomenon that researchers focus on (Constantine et al., 2017).

Self-efficacy can be defined as an individual's belief in his or her capacity to successfully perform a particular task, and that self-efficacy is situational, that is having high self-efficacy in one context (e.g. STEM teaching) does not mean having high self-efficacy in another context (e.g. science teaching) (Bandura, 1977; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2008). Individuals with high self-efficacy see difficulties as challenges to cope with continued effort and opportunities to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. Individuals with low self-efficacy, on the contrary, tend to doubt their competence and beware of challenges, resulting in low ambitions and limited persistence when faced with difficult conditions (Bandura, 1994). Teacher self-efficacy widely influences teachers' preparation, teaching strategies, and pedagogical approaches in a topic (Bray-Clark & Bates, 2003; Yoon, Evans & Strobel, 2014). Teachers' self-efficacy for teaching STEM content increased significantly after participating in integrated STEM professional development (Nathan, Atwood, Prevost, Phelps, & Tran, 2011).

Another concept that can affect the practice of teachers in utilizing STEM education is STEM awareness. STEM awareness differs among teachers, students, parents, school leadership and STEM professionals (Watson, Williams-Duncan & Peters, 2020). Teachers' knowledge, confidence and awareness of the integration of STEM practices play a major role in the successful implementation of STEM in the classroom (Nadelson & Seifert, 2013, 2017). Edwards and Loveridge (2011) argued that due to a lack of pedagogical awareness of how to teach science, teachers often do not recognize available learning opportunities. Bybee (2013) indicated various perspectives of STEM awareness. He defined nine different levels of STEM awareness which are listed as follows:

Single-discipline reference (STEM Equals Science or Mathematics)
STEM as reference for Science and Mathematics
Separate Science disciplines that incorporate other disciplines
Separate disciplines (also called silos)
Science and Mathematics connected by Technology or Engineering programs
Coordination across disciplines
Combination of two or three disciplines
Integration across disciplines
STEM as a transdisciplinary course or program

There is a need to search deeper into how to improve pre-service teachers' awareness and intentions about STEM education (Karisan, Macalalag & Johnson, 2019). Based on all the above, this study aimed to investigate pre-service teachers' STEM awareness, STEM self-efficacy, and general thoughts about integrated STEM education.

Integrated STEM

The current educational approaches give students a disconnected science, mathematics, and technology content, while the STEM approach provides learning connected with real-life situations instead of teaching the four disciplines separately (Hom, 2014). STEM can be performed in four different ways; as independent topics, with emphasis on one or two topics, integrating one STEM discipline into the other three, and mixing four disciplines (Dugger, 2010). This integration is the integration of the engineering design process into education, which will enable students to develop their technological literacy and use them in mathematics and science. The integrated STEM, which is the educational model that emerges, is a mechanism based on education systems and content areas that have the potential to provide school changes (Felix, Bandstra & Strosnider, 2010). Integrated STEM education aims to provide students with an interdisciplinary perspective, to gain scientific literacy, knowledge, and skills, to gain 21st-century skills, and provide opportunities for students to specialize in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines (Meyrick, 2011). The integrated STEM includes knowledge and practices from multiple STEM disciplines to learn and solve multidisciplinary problems (Nadelson & Seifert, 2017). In this study, the expression STEM approach or STEM education refers to integrated STEM education.

A Teacher’s professional development in STEM

The professional development of the teachers should be focused on the students' ability to learn, inquire, and reflect, as well as the development of a teachers' subject knowledge and focus on practical pedagogical skills. The support from school leaders and the involvement of external experts (Widjaja, Vale, Groves & Doig, 2015) is also a factor that is crucial in their professional development. It is important how teachers effectively use other disciplines in their courses. Integrated approaches lead to positive learning outcomes (Becker & Park, 2011; Stohlmann, Moore & Roehrig, 2012). STEM education is more progressive, student-centered, and experimental, in comparison with traditional teacher-centered education. STEM disciplines encourage the teacher to create a learning environment based on the constructivist approach that students learn by doing and living (Fioriello, 2010).

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC, 2013) has suggested ways to include STEM education more frequently in lessons, starting from preschool to higher education by using pre-service teachers and teachers’ professional development, in order to guide future research. According to the results of some STEM-related researches, STEM education is very important for teachers to develop STEM thinking (Reeve, 2015). Moreover, STEM teacher development has not been well defined or carefully examined throughout the years (Rinke, Kinlaw, Brown & Cappiello, 2016). Teacher training in many countries is focused on discipline-based fields and theoretical courses, which are mainly provided by Mathematics and Science disciplines, and therefore giving insufficient knowledge and experience in STEM (Epstein & Miller, 2011). Today, instead of programs where technology integrated knowledge is limited mainly to technology lessons, approaches to support technological understanding together with field experience and field-specific pedagogical methods are suggested (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

Teacher perceptions about STEM

According to Brown and Cooney (1982), teachers' attitudes and beliefs originate from their actions and are the main determinants of their behaviours. For this reason, many researchers have investigated the teachers' perceptions and attitudes regarding STEM education. Some studies have revealed that teachers think that students are not capable of solving STEM problems. (Al Salami, Makela & de Miranda, 2017; Bagiati & Evangelou 2015; Goodpaster, Adedokun & Weaver, 2012; Van Haneghan, Pruet, Neal-Waltman & Harlan, 2015). According to Margot and Kettler (2019), teachers think that the measurement and evaluation tools, planning time, and insufficient knowledge about the STEM disciplines are the main difficulties and obstacles to the STEM initiatives. According to teachers, the structure of the schedule of students and lack of flexibility is one of the main obstacles to STEM education (El-Deghaidy, Mansour, Alzaghibi & Alhammad, 2017). In addition, according to teachers, the sequence of subjects in the curriculum and urgency to complete the curriculum complicates the integration of more than one discipline in the nature of STEM (Herro & Quigley 2017). According to teachers, typical school structures are one of the obstacles to the implementation of STEM education (Margot & Kettler, 2019). Teachers think that STEM education creates an extra workload. They need more time to plan other subjects and prepare the necessary materials for students. Individual needs of students can also cause time loss in lessons. This leads to the conclusion that teachers complain about lack of time when implementing STEM (Bagiati & Evangelou 2015; Hsu, Purzer & Cardella 2011; Goodpaster et al., 2012; Park, Byun, Sim, Han & Baek, 2016). Teachers stated that inadequate administrative and financial support may be a challenge when it comes to STEM implementation (Clark & Andrews 2010; Hsu et al., 2011).

According to the results of the researches, teachers believe that their subject knowledge about STEM is missing. They think that pre-service and in-service training is insufficient for the implementation of STEM. Moreover, they feel that they need more clarity on how the STEM content can be applied to existing programs (Nadelson & Seifert 2013). In addition, they do not feel fully ready to integrate the STEM disciplines (Al Salami et al., 2017; Hsu et al., 2011). Teachers also believed that the lack of teaching resources was an obstacle to providing STEM opportunities for students (Park et al., 2016). Although they found STEM education important and valuable, they were not fully equipped to meet the high teacher expectations they thought were related to STEM. When a teacher’s ability to teach STEM is inadequate, it can lead to reduced self-confidence. (Bagiati & Evangelou 2015; Clark & Andrews 2010; Holstein & Keene 2013).

Rationale of the study

Teachers need professional development programs for the use of STEM education in their classrooms. Assuming that STEM education can be applied at all levels from pre-school to higher education, the number and variety of teachers who need professional development programs are quite high. While determining the needs of the teachers, it is necessary to reflect the point of view of the teachers in the process. Therefore, teachers' STEM perceptions are important. There are many studies investigating the perceptions of in-service and pre-service teachers. This study was offered a sample STEM learning activity to pre-service teachers, unlike other researches in the literature. First, a science subject in the seventh grade was presented to the participants as an Arduino based STEM lesson. Second, the views of pre-service teachers were collected with open-ended questions. In the research, the following question was asked: What are the views of pre-service teachers STEM awareness, school dimension of STEM, STEM concept, and STEM self-efficacy? The answers to this research question are expected to be a guide for the content preparation of the trainers, especially in pre-service teacher training.