PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ OPINIONS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF STEM FIELDS

The purpose of this research is to determine the opinions of the pre-service science teachers about therelationship of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. For this purpose, the research was carried out with 12 pre-service science teachers who were studying at a Science Education Teaching Department of a university in the academic year of 2015-2016. Research data were collected with an open-ended question. The collected data were analyzed using content analysis. As a result of the study, it was observed that the pre-service teachers expressed the relation of the STEM fields with five different perspectives. According to the opinions of the teacher candidates; “Mathematics is used in science”, “Science, engineering, and mathematics help make technology”, “The engineering field holds and uses science, and mathematics”, “Technology emerges as a result of engineering activities”, “Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics complement each other”