The Effect of STEM Application on Learning History and Culture based on Photo-Documents in Museums

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the effect of examining photos/documents in museums with traditional and STEM approach on students' success in history lesson, interest, attitude, national value and historical awareness. A control group pretest-posttest trial model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the research. The study group of the research is 2nd year secondary school students. The study was carried out with a total of 60 students, 30 students in the experimental group and 30 students in the control group. The application of the study was carried out in a secondary school and museums in Almaty (Kazakhstan). In the research, four different measurement tools were applied to determine the effect of museum visit and STEM approach, which are independent variables, on students' success in history lesson, attitude, interest and national value and consciousness level. Whether there is a difference between the achievement, attitude, interest, national values and consciousness levels of the experimental and control groups was analyzed with the "Independent t test". According to the findings obtained from the research, it was determined that the museum tour and STEM application studies were more effective in increasing the success, attitudes and interests of the students in the history lesson than the classical narrative-based tour in the museum with the control group. It was observed that both methods were effective in students' national values and historical awareness.