STEM Education Implementation at Early Age and Stakeholders’ Opinions: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

This study aims to observe and examine the implementation of STEM educationin early childhood and get opinions of teachers, parents and school administrators.The method of the study is the case study, one of the qualitative research methods.The data were collected with The Classroom Observation Protocol (COP) and Semi-Structured Interviews with parents, teachers and vice-principals. The study wasconducted in Turkey in a preschool education institution at a state university inIstanbul. This study was carried out with 15 children, two teachers, two vice-principalsand five parents. In the study, the data were described using the method of contentanalysis. During the STEM training, 39 out of 48 indicators were observed by using theClassroom Observation Protocol (COP). It was concluded that the STEM educationapplied contains the desired STEM education items, and STEM education mightbe appropriately incorporated in early childhood classrooms. As the results of theinterviews, it was concluded that parents did not have information about STEMeducation because they were not provided with enough information about it. Besides,teachers and vice-principals were satisfied with this training and they observedpositive changes in children as the result of the STEM education.Keywords: early age; engineering; mathematics; science; STEM; technology