An Example of STEM Education in Turkey and Distance Education for Sustainable STEM Learning

Abstract

Global competition, which affects the future of all living things on earth, relies on the economic powers of countries. Education, on the other hand, is the most sensible investment that countries can make for their future. Having emerged from these considerations, STEM education aims to raise the knowledge and skills acquired by students to the synthesis and evaluation stages in Bloom’s taxonomy with an interdisciplinary perspective. The first aim of this two-stage multiple case study was to explore STEM education project in Kayseri, Turkey, and evaluate on site by determining the opinions of all the stakeholders. The results from the first stage were related to readiness, practices, problems, and suggestions regarding STEM education. Considering the pivotal role of technology among other STEM education disciplines, the fact that this new generation of learners, also called digital natives, take this education only face-to-face in schools is an element that will affect its sustainability. Based on this premise, the second aim of this study was to explore the feasibility, sustainability, and extensibility of distance STEM education based on distance education’s expert opinions. The results from the second stage had implications for the design and implementation of STEM education. Conducted based on the opinions of almost all relevant stakeholders, this study includes an example of STEM education practice implemented in Turkey and multidimensional evaluations of delivery of STEM education via distance education.