Development And Application Of Students’ Attitude Scale For STEM Education

In order to improve students’ interest and related abilities in STEM,a lot of time and money has been invested in STEM education programs and projects.However,these investments have yielded little results as demonstrated by the continued reports being disseminated each year demanding greater STEM investment and results.The development of an instrument that can accurately measure student attitude toward STEM is crucial to STEM-based programs.The purpose of this study was to develop a scale that measures students’ attitudes toward STEM and STEM education.The Concerns-Based Adoption Model,Taxonomy of Education Objectives and other relevant theories were used as a source of inspiration for the development of the scale.The author presented selected items to a research team of teachers with some experience in STEM education,and then determined the preliminary research project after discussion.Initial pilot testing refined the instrument through principal components analysis and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.The author identified three main components of student attitudes—interest,ability,and value.Reliability coefficients were strong for each of the identified principal components--coefficients were above.70 alpha.A student focus group was used to present their understanding of the item,to demonstrate item clarity and overall instrument communication.Before the known group comparison study,the scale was revised with the results of comprehensive analysis.Known group comparisons were conducted in a STEM-based secondary school,principal component analysis and the Cronbach’s alpha program were again applied to the data collected in the known group comparisons.The two samples were compared using two distinct independent variables—grade level(ninth-grade and eleventhgrade),and gender(male and female).Each independent variable was analyzed for each of the researcher identified principal components:interest,ability,and value.Hypotheses were designed and tested for each of the independent variables.These Hypotheses were used to provide another example of structural validity for the revised scale.The results were analyzed using the Manova program and subsequent univariate analysis and nonparametric analysis procedures.Assumptions regarding homogeneity of variance andnormality were also carried out for the statistical procedures.The results of the analysis indicate that most of the independent variables reviewed maintain homogeneity of variance,and some content areas or a single level of attitude violated the homogeneity of variance.Normal distributions were not demonstrated by the majority of the independent variable samples,the distributions were primarily negatively-skewed.According to the results of the data analyses,the male students indicated a statistically significant more positive attitude toward STEM when compared to the female students for the independent variable of gender.The statistical significance was demonstrated specifically for the content areas of technology and engineering.The results of the data analysis supported the proposed hypothesis for the content area of technology and engineering and provided the revised student attitude toward STEM instrument with an example of construct validity.Data analysis of grade independent variables did not provide statistically significant results,thus preserving the null hypothesis of this independent variable.Through an extensive review of various data analysis programs,the scale of students’ attitudes toward STEM shows positive examples of validity and reliability.The results of the exploratory study have great prospects for developing a useful attitude scale.Future research will be helpful for the development and improvement of the scale to measure students’ attitudes towards STEM.as the sample size increases and changes.This study and the resulting attitude scale are necessary steps to enhance the quality and design of STEM education programs.