ABSTRACT

Background: An acronym for ‘science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics,’ STEAM education is an approach that supports the understanding of science content by understanding the skills stimulated by artistic experience. However, only a limited number of experimental studies have investigated the effects of STEAM education on concept learning. Therefore, this paper examines the need for STEAM education to focus on the cultivation of students’ conceptual understanding of science content.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of STEAM education on fostering 7th-grade (aged 13–14 years) students’ conceptual understanding of the topics of force and energy.

Sample: The study sample comprised 74 7th-grade students from two different classes in a Turkish secondary school (study group and control group).

Design and Methods: An experimental embedded mixed methods design was used, primarily based on quantitative data, with the qualitative data set embedded within and generally playing a supportive role. A control group was used to determine the role of the STEAM approach in the students’ conceptual understanding. A STEAM approach was administered to the study group, while the control group was taught according to the regular science curriculum. Research data were collected with the Force and Energy Conceptual Test and through semi-structured interviews with ten study group students.

Results: The results demonstrate that STEAM education positively affected the students’ conceptual understanding and reduced or shifted the number of misconceptions. Furthermore, the study group’s post-trial conceptual understanding scores were significantly higher than those of the control group. The interviewees indicated that STEAM education’s support for a learner-centered environment fostered the students’ conceptual understandings.

Conclusions: STEAM education is useful for understanding concepts. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of STEAM education approaches on students’ conceptual understanding.

摘要

背景：“科学、技术、工程、艺术和数学”的首字母缩写词，STEAM 教育是一种通过理解艺术体验激发的技能来支持理解科学内容的方法。然而，只有有限数量的实验研究调查了 STEAM 教育对概念学习的影响。因此，本文探讨了STEAM教育注重培养学生对科学内容的概念性理解的必要性。

目的：本研究旨在调查 STEAM 教育对培养 7 年级（13-14 岁）学生对力和能量主题的概念理解的有效性。

样本：研究样本包括来自土耳其中学两个不同班级（研究组和对照组）的 74 名 7 年级学生。

设计和方法：使用实验嵌入混合方法设计，主要基于定量数据，定性数据集嵌入其中并通常起到支持作用。对照组用于确定 STEAM 方法在学生概念理解中的作用。研究组采用 STEAM 方法，而对照组则按照常规科学课程进行教学。研究数据是通过力和能量概念测试以及通过对十名学习小组学生的半结构化访谈收集的。

结果：结果表明，STEAM 教育对学生的概念理解产生积极影响，并减少或转移了误解的数量。此外，研究组的试验后概念理解得分显着高于对照组。受访者表示，STEAM 教育对以学习者为中心的环境的支持促进了学生的概念理解。

结论：STEAM 教育有助于理解概念。本研究通过调查 STEAM 教育方法对学生概念理解的影响，为文献做出贡献。