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This study aims to investigate the motivation and career interest in STEM fields of high school students enrolled in public schools in the districts of Kayseri in Turkey according to various factors, to ascertain the relationship between the two variables, and to present a model for the relationship between the variables. The causal-comparative research and correlation (relational) research designs, which are among the quantitative research designs, were used in this study, which involved 1,667 students from five high education institutions situated. The research employed the Career Interest Scale in STEM Fields and the Motivation Scale in STEM Fields to gather data. It has been found that students whose favorite and most successful course is about STEM have much higher motivation and career interest in STEM fields than the other pupils. According to the study, students who are considering majoring in one of the university's STEM fields have much higher motivation and career interest in STEM fields than other students do in general. Additionally, the connection between motivation and career interest in STEM fields was looked at. According to research, students' motivation in STEM fields accounts for 70% of changes in their career interests in those fields.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of STEM Curriculum designed and implemented for undergraduate programs of faculties of education. The research model is experimental. The design is a single group pre-test post-test experimental design. The study group consisted of 18 pre-service teachers studying in the Department of Science Education. In order to determine the effectiveness of STEM Curriculum, two data collection tools were prepared: "Education Module Evaluation Form" and "Interview Form". The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used to analyze the quantitative data and the content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. According to the findings, it was concluded that the STEM curriculum applied positively influenced the development of the competency of pre-service teachers to prepare education module (lesson plans, work sheets, measurement-evaluation tools) according to STEM education approach. It was concluded that the STEM curriculum contributed to the knowledge and skills, professional competencies and awareness of preservice teachers about preparing educational material according to STEM education approach.

In this study, it is aimed to develop a scale to be used to determine the STEM career interest of high school students. Because, when STEM career studies in the literature are examined, the lack of STEM career scale for high school students is remarkable. In this research, developing STEM Career Interest Scale for high school students is important for literature. The scale development principles specified by DeVellis were taken into consideration during the development of the scale. 25-items STEM career interest scale trial form was applied to 462 high school students in their 2016-2017 academic year in Kayseri in Turkey. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed for the construct validity through the data set obtained from the study group. SPSS 22 and AMOS 24 package programs were used to analyze the data. According to the results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), it was determined that the scale consisted of 20 items and 3 sub-dimensions. Scale sub-dimensions were named as: interest, self-efficacy, outcome expectations. It was determined that the three-factor structure related to the scale explained 71% of the total variance. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.96 for the whole scale. STEM Career Interest Scale developed for high school students can be used in experimental studies or descriptive studies. Validity and reliability studies can be performed by applying the scale to different education levels and it can be used in the studies. [This study was presented as an oral presentation at the 10th International Congress of Educational Research in 2018.]

In this research, it was aimed to analyze the profiles of secondary school female students considering STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers at university by collecting information such as education status of the parents, number of siblings, monthly income of the household, their favorite courses at school and the departments they intend to choose at the university. The research addressed the following question: "What is the profile of secondary school female students who consider choosing STEM careers?" This study is structured according to instrumental case study design, one of the qualitative research designs. The research data were collected from 210 female students studying in Anatolian high schools by a form in which the students' information was requested. After collecting the forms applied to a wider workgroup, female students' data were separated and the departments they intend to choose at the university were analyzed. Originally, the form has been applied to a larger sample, following the collection of the data, the data of female students was analyzed separately to see the departments that they consider at the university. The departments stated by female students were coded as STEM careers and non-STEM careers. The results obtained from the evaluation of the data are given as frequency and percentage. Regarding female students who consider preferring STEM careers, it was found that the education level of their parents is high; the number of siblings and therefore the number of people in their household is low; the monthly household income is moderate or high; and the students who like the courses directly related to STEM fields are more interested in choosing STEM careers. It is seen that more than half of the female students who want to choose STEM careers want to pursue a career in medicine. [This study was presented as an oral paper at the International Conference on Science, Mathematics, Entrepreneurship and Technology Education.]

The purposes of this study were to determine whether the departments that high school students consider choosing for their university education belong to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields or not and to reveal the relationship between their choice and gender, grade, and type of institution. The research was conducted during the second semester of 2016-2017 academic year with 2129 students from five public schools located in the Kocasinan and Melikgazi districts of the Kayseri Province in Turkey. Data were collected through a survey instrument requesting students' demographic information and the departments that they selected for university education. Afterward, the departments mentioned by the students were coded as STEM-related and STEM-unrelated departments. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 22.0 Statistic Software and frequencies, percentages, and Chi-square analysis were employed. Significant relationships were found between grade, gender, type of institution, and considering STEM-related department for university education. As a result, this study recommends that informative and stimulating activities involving STEM departments of universities should be organized for senior high school students to promote STEM fields.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) career preferences in university of the students at different socioeconomic levels studying in Anatolian high schools and the relation between their socioeconomic levels and preferences. The research is performed with 886 students studying in Anatolian high schools in Kayseri province in the second term of the 2016-2017 academic year. The data is gathered via a form with demographic information and university career preferences of the students. The socioeconomic levels of the students are determined and their university career preferences are coded as STEM career field or non-STEM career field. In the analysis of the data, the SPSS 22 program is utilized. In the analysis of the data, frequency, percentage, and chi-square analysis are used. In the research, a significant relation is found between the socioeconomic levels of the students and whether their university career preferences are within the STEM field or not.

In this research, it is aimed to examine in depth the effect of design based learning (DBL) program on pre-service science teachers' on development of the decision making skills and determine the opinions of pre-service science teachers regarding the effect of the DBL program on decision making skills. For this purpose, embedded integrated design of a mixed-methods approach was employed in this study. In the quantitative part, one-group pre-test and post-test experimental design was used. In the qualitative part was used multiple-case (embedded) design. The study group for the quantitative part of the research is made up of 36 pre-service science teachers determined by convenience sampling method. The qualitative study group is made up of 6 pre-service science teachers determined by maximum variety sampling. The quantitative data of the study were collected via decision-making skills test. DBL activities worksheet and semi-structured interviews were used as qualitative data. Findings indicated that there was a significant difference between participants' pre-test and post-test decision skills measures in favor of the post-tests. In this study, it was determined that the decision process related to the design challenge revealed from the real life situations were identification of the problem, evaluation of the alternatives, decision applications, decision and application steps.

One of the main objectives of education, which raises individuals that the society needs, is to resource labor force that will provide the development of the society by maintaining the economic, social, scientific and technological advances. Many countries that aspire to have an advanced economy and technology aim to build a society that is advanced at Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and have sustainable development in these fields, and this has been one of the main educational strategies of those countries. STEM education has a strategic importance for our country to maintain the competitive power on international scale. This research aims to conduct a needs analysis towards the curricular design of STEM education to be proposed for the undergraduate programs of science education at education faculties. The study holds a descriptive model and qualitative methods were used. The study group consists of 12 faculty from Science, Mathematics, Computer and Instructional Technologies at Faculty of Education, and from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Gazi University; 15 science teachers who work at the schools which have different socio-economic levels in Ankara, and 42 sophomore students who study at the Department of Science Education at Gazi University Faculty of Education. Content analysis was used as the data analysis method. Findings of the study reveal that there are no studies conducted to integrate different fields into teacher education programs, there are no courses related to STEM education integrated into the curriculum, and the knowledge and skills pre-service teachers should gain to implement this approach in their professional teaching career do not exist in the curriculum. In addition, it was found that most of the teachers believe teacher collaboration; they associate their courses mostly with mathematics and information technologies. Likewise, it was identified that the main reason behind why the teachers cannot teach through interdisciplinary approach is due to teacher related reasons. Concerning the pre-service education, The Ministry of National Education and education faculties should work collaboratively, determine the teacher competencies and try to develop undergraduate curriculum for pre-service teachers to gain these competencies. Training teachers during pre-service period rather than in-service training will play a crucial role to gain the expected results from the approach.

The aim of this study is to reveal pre-service science teachers' cognitive structures regarding Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and science education. The study group of the study consisted of 192 pre-service science teachers. A Free Word Association Test (WAT) consisting of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and science education concepts and semi-structured interview records were utilised to reveal their opinions regarding these concepts and inter-conceptual relations were used as data collection tools. While the WAT was implemented with all of the pre-service teachers, semi-structured interviews were carried out with only eight of the pre-service science teachers. Using two data collection tools via triangulation, enabled the researchers to obtain similar and varied findings. According to the frequencies, WAT was analysed using the cut-off point (CP) method; hence, concept network maps were composed and interviews were descriptively analysed. The findings of the study revealed that pre-service teachers' cognitive structures involved STEM disciplines and science education were quite independent from each other. Also, they could not make a distinction between science concept and science education concept, nor associate "technology, engineering and mathematics' concepts" with "science and science education" concepts.

This study aims to investigate the motivation and career interest in STEM fields of high school students enrolled in public schools in the districts of Kayseri in Turkey according to various factors, to ascertain the relationship between the two variables, and to present a model for the relationship between the variables. The causal-comparative research and correlation (relational) research designs, which are among the quantitative research designs, were used in this study, which involved 1,667 students from five high education institutions situated. The research employed the Career Interest Scale in STEM Fields and the Motivation Scale in STEM Fields to gather data. It has been found that students whose favorite and most successful course is about STEM have much higher motivation and career interest in STEM fields than the other pupils. According to the study, students who are considering majoring in one of the university's STEM fields have much higher motivation and career interest in STEM fields than other students do in general. Additionally, the connection between motivation and career interest in STEM fields was looked at. According to research, students' motivation in STEM fields accounts for 70% of changes in their career interests in those fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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