Abstract
Science-focused schools are specialized general high schools with science and math completion units of more than 45% of the total curriculum units, and the Ministry of Education recommended operating 25 hours out of 50 hours of science and math experience activities in STEAM. This study aims to develop a STEAM program to improve system thinking for high school students in science-focused schools and apply it to high school students in E science-focused schools to analyze changes in system thinking before and after the program was introduced to verify its effectiveness. As a quantitative test, 273 first- and second-year students were interviewed on the system thinking measurement test. In addition three chief teachers were interviewed as a qualitative test. As a qualitative tool for measuring the effectiveness of the developed program, word association, analysis of relationships between words, and causal map were prepared, and thick data were collected through individual interviews of four sophomores in the science core class. The results indicated that the pre-education program and main program developed under the themes of ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Air Energizer’ indicated having a positive effect on improving system thinking ability and achieved significant improvements in qualitative tools such as ‘connecting relationships between words’, ‘creating causal map’, and ‘providing a feedback loop.’ It is intended to contribute so that education using the programs to improve the system thinking of high school students in science-focused schools can be further activated.
Figures & Tables
Fig. 1. Domain and contents of teacher interview
