Research On Structure And Assessment Of Ordinary High School Students' STEM Literacy

In today's world,science,technology,engineering and mathematics have penetrated into every field of daily life,and we are more and more closely connected with STEM.STEM literacy is very important for personal development,economic construction,social development and even human progress.Having STEM literacy will benefit a wide range of stakeholders.STEM literacy is an important goal of STEM education.Technology educators should take the responsibility of STEM literacy research.It was found that there are several prominent problems in the current research results of STEM literacy through literature review: firstly,the definition of STEM literacy has not been unified;secondly,the definition of STEM literacy is fragmented;thirdly,the evaluation mechanism of STEM literacy has not been established.The explanation of STEM literacy in theory and practice needs to be strengthened.Based on this,this paper puts forward the following research questions: Question 1: how to define STEM literacy? Question 2: what is the structure of STEM literacy? Question 3:how to assess STEM literacy? Question 4:Is there any difference in students' STEM Literacy? The above questions can not be answered easily.We need to further study.This study took ordinary senior high school students as the research object,used the systematic literature review method to extract the elements of STEM literacy from the literature that meets the requirements,constructed the dimension of STEM literacy,and transformed the abstract concepts into operational definitions which can be measured.This paper summarized the existing research results and defects,set the research objectives and put forward six research hypotheses.Firstly,students have the same performance in all dimensions of STEM literacy;secondly,male students and female students have the same STEM literacy;thirdly,students of different grades have the same STEM literacy;fourthly,students from different cities have the same STEM literacy;fifthly,students from different regions have the same STEM literacy;sixthly,students who have participated in STEM related competitions and students who have not participated in STEM related competitions have the same STEM literacy.Then,based on the previous research results and a series of questionnaire design standards and principles,we developed the STEM Literacy Scale items.Through item analysis,exploratory factor analysis,reliability and validity test,confirmatory factor analysis and other statistical methods,the validity and reliability of STEM literacy four sub scales are verified.The STEM literacy scale consists of four sub scales: STEM knowledge,STEM ability,STEM attitude and STEM social responsibility,with a total of 44 items.STEM knowledge is further divided into STEM subject feature recognition and STEM concept understanding.STEM ability includes five secondary dimensions: problem solving ability,communication ability,cooperation ability,critical ability and new technology adaptability.STEM attitude includes STEM learning attitude,STEM career attitude and STEM value recognition.STEM social responsibility maintains the first level dimension without further subdivision.Finally,the scale was used to carry out the formal test.Based on data(N=1149),descriptive analysis,difference analysis and regression analysis were conducted.The results include: 1.The status quo of senior high school students' STEM literacy is not optimistic.The performance of STEM knowledge,STEM ability,STEM attitude and STEM social responsibility is poor.There are also differences in the two dimensions of STEM literacy,but the overall performance is poor.The mean score of STEM literacy at all levels did not exceed 5.2.There are gender differences in STEM literacy of students,and boys perform better than girls.3.There are grade differences in students' STEM literacy,but only in the dimension of STEM knowledge.4.There are city differences in STEM literacy of students,and students in economically developed city perform slightly better than those in other city.5.There are area differences in students' STEM literacy.6.Students' STEM literacy is affected by whether they participate in STEM related competitions.The students who participated in the competition performed better than those who did not.On the whole,Senior high school students' STEM literacy needs to be improved,and the gap of STEM literacy needs to be narrowed.7.The four first level dimensions of STEM literacy are positively correlated.Based on the research process and results,the research also has an in-depth discussion,which is divided into two parts: the reflection of the measurement system and the explanation of the research results.The discussion part is an explanation process based on evidence,which provides deep understanding for researchers and readers.The discussion always revolves around the results of the research data.Through the research questions or research hypotheses put forward in front of this study and literature,new knowledge is formed through critical thinking.According to the research results and discussion,this study puts forward suggestions: firstly,pay attention to the people related to STEM education to improve their understanding of STEM literacy;secondly,carry out evidence-based research on STEM education to highlight the educational decision-making and improvement function of the results;thirdly,form a cooperation mechanism among family,school and society,to improve the quality of STEM education.fourthly,face up to the gender differences in STEM field,and avoid the negative impact of gender stereotype.fifthly,innovate the training ideas of STEM literacy to develop students' multi-level STEM literacy.Of course,there are still some deficiencies in sample selection,literature selection,data input,independent variable selection,and the number of items in the scale.In the future,researchers will continue to focus on STEM literacy research,strive to make up for these deficiencies,improve the generalization of research results,improve research efficiency,expand the scope of research,and further improve the quality of research.