The Effects of STEM Education with Practical Skills on Mathematics Reasoning Ability of Grade 6 Students

Abstract

               The objectives of this research were 1) to compare the mathematics reasoning ability of grade 6 students on the topic electricity before and after being taught by using STEM Education with practical skills; and 2) to compare the mathematics reasoning ability of grade 6 students on the topic electricity after using STEM Education with practical skills with the criterion of 70 percent of the full marks. The sample used in this research consisted of 39 grade 6 students, studying in the second semester of the academic year 2020 at Watmahaeyong School under Ayutthaya Primary Educational Service Area Office 1. They were selected by using multi-stage random sampling. The research instruments were 1) 10 lesson plans 20 hours for STEM Education with practical skills using the topic electricity at the highest appropriate level, and 2) a mathematics reasoning ability test on the topic electricity with a reliability of 0.84. The statistics used for the data analysis were 1) percentage, 2) mean, 3) standard deviation, and 4) t-test for one sample. The research findings were as follows              1) The mathematics reasoning ability of grade 6 students on the topic electricity after being taught by using STEM Education with practical skills was higher at a statistically significant level of 0.05; and 2) The mathematics reasoning ability of the grade 6 students on the topic electricity after using STEM Education with practical skills was higher than the criterion of 70 percent of the full marks at a statistically significant level of 0.05 ( = 16.05, S.D. = 2.025)