A Study On The Impact Of STEM Courses On The Engineering Literacy Of Primary School Students

At present,the popular international STEM education integrates the four disciplines of science,mathematics,technology,and engineering,and strives to break the boundaries of various disciplines,and cultivate students' ability to comprehensively use the knowledge of various disciplines to solve real-world problems;"Primary School Science Curriculum Standard(2017)" added "technology and engineering" as a separate field to the curriculum content,and merged with "material science,life science,earth and universe science" into four fields as the main learning content of elementary school science courses.It is not difficult to find out that the "engineering" discipline that has always been ignored has appeared in people's vision.For this relatively "fresh" discipline,it is very necessary to study how to evaluate it.Based on this,this article first defines the connotation of engineering literacy,which is divided into eight dimensions-system thinking,problem discovery,visualization,improvement,creative problem solving,adaptation,maintenance and troubleshooting,and engineering design.Secondly,the "Primary School Students' Engineering Literacy Questionnaire" was developed.After the reliability and validity test,the engineering literacy status of the sixth grade students of X elementary school was investigated.It was found that the engineering literacy of primary school students was generally average,in all dimensions of engineering literacy.There is a gap in terms of quality;the highest score is in the "improvement" dimension,and the lowest in the "maintenance and troubleshooting";students are less frequently exposed to engineering design inside and outside the school;there is no significant difference between male and female students in all dimensions of engineering literacy.Finally,develop a "STEM course based on the engineering design process",select experimental classes and control classes for a one-month quasi-experimental design,and study the impact of such STEM courses on improving students' engineering literacy.The results found that this kind of STEM courses can improve the engineering literacy of primary school students;this kind of STEM courses have different effects on the improvement of all dimensions of primary school students' engineering literacy;this kind of STEM courses have four dimensions of "visualization,improvement,system thinking,and engineering design" for primary school students.Engineering literacy has a significant impact,but has a small impact on the two dimensions of "adaptation,maintenance and troubleshooting".According to the research conclusions,suggestions for cultivating students' engineering literacy are put forward: aiming at cultivating students' engineering thinking habits and making students think like engineers;developing “diversified”STEM courses to improve students' engineering literacy in a targeted manner;through engineering Design process to cultivate students' engineering design ability;develop local primary school students' engineering literacy evaluation framework to make engineering literacy evaluation more scientific;improve teachers' level and improve their knowledge system;build a three-dimensional engineering education environment.The main innovations of this article are: taking primary school students' engineering literacy as the research theme;using quasi-experimental methods to study the relationship between STEM courses and engineering literacy;insufficient research:small experimental samples;Due to the problem of question validity,the two dimensions of "discovering problems and creatively solving problems" of engineering literacy could not be measured and evaluated.