The perception of pre-university students on STEM

Abstract

Abstract STEM is an integrated teaching and learning approach in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic. The decreasing enrolment of students in STEM-field is alarming and impacting the industry as well as the university students’ intake. This study is focusing on one hundred of pre-university (foundation) students by looking at their understanding on STEM education and the impacts of STEM module in nurturing their interest on STEM. The study applied naturalistic inquiry to assess their perceptions of STEM prior and subsequently after involve in a STEM module activities. The results showed that majority of students are female and from different background, they are interested in learning science shown by the increase of agreement to 38% and 40% after the activity with the decrease in the percentage of neutral and disagree level. The percentage of interest on STEM was decreased after the activity. However, the level of confident about their ability towards science was increased. The confident level lead the respondents to choose career related to science/STEM based on the increase level of agreement from 22% to 28% and from 24% to 32% for strongly agree and agree relatively. Hence, the outreach with attractive activities would potentially add value for students’ intrinsic motivation for science and science learning.