Investigation of the Relationship Between Middle School Students' Computational Thinking Skills and their STEM Career Interest and Attitudes Toward Inquiry

HAVA K., KOYUNLU ÜNLÜ Z.

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY, cilt.30, sa.4, ss.484-495, 2021 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 30 Sayı: 4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2021
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10956-020-09892-y
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, EBSCO Education Source, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), INSPEC, Psycinfo
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.484-495
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: STEM career interest, Computational thinking, Attitude toward inquiry, Middle school students, Structural equation modeling, MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, CHOICE
  • Yozgat Bozok Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study investigated the relationship between middle school students' computational thinking skills and their STEM career interest and attitudes toward inquiry. A total of 289 students (146 female, 143 male) enrolled in four different middle schools in one province of Turkey participated in this study. Three different data collection tools were used in the study: Science Technology Engineering Mathematics-Career Interest Survey, computational thinking scale, and the scale of attitude towards inquiry. The data were analyzed using the structural regression model, which is one of the structural equation models. A significant correlation was found between the middle school students' computational thinking skills and their STEM career interest and attitudes toward inquiry. In this context, efforts can be made to develop computational thinking skills, such as creativity, algorithmic thinking, cooperative thinking, and critical thinking to increase middle school students' STEM career interest and attitudes toward inquiry.