STEM education is gaining increasing attention globally to fulfill the acute shortage of STEM workforce. Executing STEM education is frequently viewed as a complex and challenging agenda. The current study proposes Integrated STEM-lab activities in the teaching and learning of electrolysis. The activities use real-world contexts as a platform to exhibit the transdisciplinary nature of integration of the four STEM disciplines. Embedded mixed methods research used quantitative one group pre-test–post-test design, and qualitative interviews were employed to measure the effectiveness of the Integrated STEM-lab activities in improving 50 secondary school students’ (Form Four equivalent to Grade 9) understanding of electrolysis. The Electrolysis Diagnostics Instrument was administered for pre- and post-tests. One-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) revealed that the Integrated STEM-lab activities effectively improved the students’ understanding of electrolysis measured in three subscales (Wilks’ lambda = 0.664;F(3,96) = 16.164; p < 0.05; η = 0.336) with 33.6% of the variances in the pre- and post-tests explained by the treatment. The qualitative interview data supported and provided insight into understanding the quantitative findings. In the interviews, the students elaborated their understanding of electrolysis with details, and consistently the activities were referred to in their responses. The findings of this study suggest that Integrated-STEM lab activities are suitable to address the limitation of the existing laboratory activities for knowledge construction. The activities are exemplary for integrating the four STEM disciplines into the standard science curriculum.

中文翻译：

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评估STEM实验室综合活动对提高中学生对电解的理解的有效性†

STEM教育在全球日益受到重视，以解决STEM劳动力的严重短缺问题。执行STEM教育通常被视为一个复杂而具有挑战性的议程。当前的研究提出了在电解教学中集成STEM实验室的活动。这些活动使用现实环境作为平台来展示四个STEM学科的整合的跨学科性质。嵌入式混合方法研究使用了一组定量的测试前-测试后设计，并进行了定性访谈，以衡量集成式STEM实验室活动对提高50名中学生（相当于4年级的9年级）的理解的有效性。电解。电解诊断仪用于测试前和测试后。F（3,96）= 16.164; p <0.05；η = 0.336），治疗前和后测的方差为33.6％。定性访谈数据支持并提供了对理解定量发现的理解。在访谈中，学生们详细阐述了他们对电解的理解，并在回答中始终提到了这些活动。这项研究的结果表明，集成STEM实验室活动适合解决现有实验室活动对知识建构的局限性。这些活动是将四个STEM学科整合到标准科学课程中的典范。