EFFECT OF STEAM - BASED INTEGRATED LEARNING UNITS ON 5TH GRADE STUDENTS

To improve the effectiveness of science education, educators in all grade levels are calling for increasing research in STEM education. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Integration of arts (A) in STEM could strengthen and enhance the effectiveness of STEM education at the elementary grade level so that it could generate more creativity and more intuitive learning process. Thus, STEAM learning in the elementary level is a strong foundation of STEM education for higher level. A pilot STEAM-based integrated learning units was developed and implemented in two classes of fifth-grader in an elementary school in Bangkok during 2015. The findings from the implementation of this pilot program are promising. The effectiveness of the pilot STEAM-based integrated learning units was met. The post-learning achievement test of the students were higher than the pre-learning counterpart achievement. The post-learning scientific creativity was higher than that of pre-learning. Data from learning management satisfaction questionnaire indicated that students were satisfied with this program.