Promoting Indonesian students' attitudes toward science through Korean STEAM education

Nurlaelasari Rusmana, A., Sya’bandari, Y., Qurota Aini, R., Rachmatullah, A., & Ha, M.(2020). Promoting Indonesian students' attitudes toward science through Korean STEAM education. In SH. Paik, KH. Cho, M. Ha, & YH. Kim (Eds.), International Conference on the Advancement of STEAM 2020 : Borderless Connectivity (pp. 23-25).

Promoting Indonesian students' attitudes toward science through Korean STEAM education Ai Nurlaelasari Rusmanaa, Yustika Sya’bandaria, Rahmi Qurota Ainia, Arif Rachmatullahb, and Minsu Haa* a

Kangwon National University, 1, Kangwondaehak-gil, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, 24341, Republic of Korea b North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States

Abstract: In the globalization era, engaging youth in science and technology is a joint responsibility across nations. The inclusion of art to STEM (STEAM) can improve students’ interest in learning science. This study is an investigation of the effects of Korean STEAM education on Indonesian students’ attitudes towards science. Six hundred eight Indonesian middle school students participated in this study. Their attitudes toward science were assessed before and after the program with the 5point Likert scale of Behavior, Related Attitudes, and Intentions towards Science (BRAINS) survey.

Gender data were collected as well, and the students’ attitudes were further analyzed using a person measure produced from IRT Rasch analysis. Results showed that Korean STEAM improved students’ behavioral and normative beliefs about science while it decreased the control belief, suggesting that the program had positive impacts on the students’ beliefs about the importance of science and convinced them to pursue science-related careers. However, the lesson is likely more difficult than Indonesian science learning, and thereby the students’ confidence declined after the program. Gender is successfully being a predictor variable for intention and normative dimension. Furthermore, based on clustering analysis, the changes in the students’ attitudes toward science following the program are classified into three groups, and this classification will enable future researchers to design and develop programs that promote positive attitudes toward science.

Keywords: attitude towards science, BRAINS, Korean STEAM, Indonesian students.

transformation. A survey found that most South Koreans showed a strong interest in and had positive attitudes toward science and technology [4]. Also, South Korea actively participates in the globalization agenda for escalating science education quality across the world and enhancing youth engagement in science.

The Korean Ministry of Education (MOE) facilitates a global exchange program that enables Korean scholars to deliver Korea’s best science practices to other countries. In this study, STEAM education that is recognized to improve students’ interest in learning science [5] were delivered to Indonesia. The program did not only introduce integrated Korean science but also promote Indonesian students’ interest in science and their positive attitude about science. Two research questions were proposed in this study, which is 1) to what extent might the Korean STEAM education promote the Indonesian middle school students? and 2) what are the characteristics of the students’ changes in attitude toward science after the program?

1. INTRODUCTION The rapid development of science and technology in the globalization era entails youth’s interest and engagement in STEM development and careers [1][2].

The massive distribution of intellectual resources in globalization suggests that human empowerment in every corner of the world is a joint global responsibility [2]. Researchers [3] proposed that individual empowerment through globalization will only be successful with educational development.

Therefore, to engage youth with science across the globe, the cross-country educational development programs in science education is important.

South Korea is a developed country that is recognized for its advanced science and technology, which supported its rapid socio-economic __________ Manuscript received June 3, 2020; revised June 20, 2020; accepted June 26, 2020.

2. METHOD

 Corresponding author Tel.: 82-33-250-6730 Fax. 82-33259-5600; e-mail: msha@kangwon.ac.kr

The participants of the study were 608 middle school

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Nurlaelasari Rusmana, A., Sya’bandari, Y., Qurota Aini, R., Rachmatullah, A., & Ha, M.

students. They were 46.9% were male, 52.1% were female, and 1% did not report. A one-group pretestposttest quasi-experimental design was performed to assess the effects of the Korean STEAM on Indonesian middle school students’ positive attitudes toward science. They were asked to complete the BRAINS survey both before the program began and at the end of the program.

The BRAINS instrument is a validated instrument used for measuring the attitudes toward science [5]. It consists of 30 items on 5 five dimensions: attitude, behavioral belief, control belief, intention, and normative belief. For each item, the student indicated to what extent they agreed or disagreed on a 5-point Likert scale. To answer the first research question, we ran repeated-measure ANOVA. For the second one, by using gain scores, we categorized the students based on their change in attitude towards science during the program using “Mclust” package in R.

significant impacts on only two dimensions, intention (F [1, 600] = 5.446, p < 0.05, ηp2 = .009), and normative belief (F [1, 600] = 4.189, p < 0.05, ηp2 = .007) with small effect sizes. In the intention, male and female students showed opposing changes while males’ scores increased, females’ scores decreased. On the normative belief dimension, male students’ scores increased dramatically, reach closer to female students’ scores.

3.2. Classifying the students’ based on their changes in attitude toward science after the program The three-group cluster was chosen for classifying the changes in students’ attitudes toward science during the program (BIC = -8519.16).

Presented in Figure 2, Group 1 (29.3%) comprised the students whose scores increased on most of the dimensions after the program, called as Increased Trend (IT) group. In Group 2 (62%), as an overall, there was no significant change in these students’ attitudes toward science; named as Small Change (SC) group. Last, the scores in Group 3 (8.7%) declined on all dimensions and this was named the Decreased Trend (DT) group.

3. RESULTS 3.1. The effect of the Korean STEAM on Indonesian students’ attitude toward science The program had a significant impact on three dimensions of BRAINS. In detail, it had a small effect on the behavioral (F [1, 600] = 7.957, p < .01, ηp2 = .013) and normative belief (F [1, 600] = 6.182, p < 0.05, ηp2 = .010) with an increasing pattern and a medium effect on the control belief (F [1, 600] = 61.193, p < .01, ηp2 = .093) dimension with a decreasing pattern.

Figure 2. The Indonesian students’ attitude towards science in pretest and posttest during the program

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 4.1. The effect of STEAM: which dimensions improved?

Behavioral belief. The students involved in the program came to value science and science-related careers more. STEAM made them engage with lessons and it may strengthen their belief in benefit associated with science [6].

Normative belief. The increase could be attributed to students frequently talking about STEAM experience with their families given that Indonesia’s culture is collectivist [7]. Students felt supported by their families to engage in science and pursue sciencerelated careers.

Control belief. After the program, students felt that

Figure 1. The Indonesian students’ attitude towards science in pretest and posttest during the program Shown in Figure 1, most female students’ scores on all dimensions were higher than male students’ scores both before and after the program. Yet, gender had 24

Promoting Indonesian students' attitudes toward science through Korean STEAM education

science was difficult; they were less confident about understanding and doing well on science tests even when they tried hard [6]. The gender was only a significant predictor of intention and of normative beliefs. On both dimensions, the female students’ scores were higher than male students’ scores, indicating that the girls intended to continue studying science and to pursue it as a career [6].

[2]

[3]

[4] 4.2. The students’ group classification based on their change of attitude towards science On the control dimension, the pattern in all three groups similarly reflected that Indonesian middle school students we studied did not recognize any control over their ability to master science. The students’ perceived lack of efficacy in science derived from the difficulty of Korean science lessons. Indeed, the experience of encountering difficulties in learning science is likely to influence subsequent attitudes toward science, particularly efficacy [8]. Moreover, more than half of the students who participated in the program (62%) were categorized in the SC group. In other words, STEAM had only a small impact on promoting Indonesian students’ attitudes toward science. It might because science in Indonesia is still often taught through traditional observation rather than experimentation and Korea’s science curriculum harnesses a wider variety of student skills that were likely difficult for the Indonesian students.

[5]

[6]

[7]

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Ai Nurlaelasari Rusmana is a master’s student in the Department of Science Education at Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, Republic of Korea. Prior to pursuing a master’s degree in Korea, she graduated from the Biology Education program in Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.

Her research focuses on cognitive biases, particularly overconfidence bias in science education. She is particularly interested in designing an intervention program for reducing the overconfidence bias for pre-service science teachers.

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