STUDENTS' AWARENESS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS (STEM) IN PAHANG

Malaysia is now moving into Industrial Revolution 4.0., a transition that requires the number of experts and skilled workers to be increased. Therefore, the government has realized that the education system needs an improvement by introducing STEM education in schools. Unfortunately, despite the government's best efforts to strengthen STEM through a number of policies and initiatives, student interest in STEM has continued to decline over the past few years. Hence, this study aims to examine how students perceive the contents of STEM i.e. "Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics". Data from 63 secondary school students gathered using a cross-sectional method for the survey. The "STEM Semantics Survey" from past researchers was adopted and adapted. Findings show that secondary school students have positive perceptions of STEM content. The schools' administrators, especially teachers, can focus on the scores of each semantic element for STEM content as a guide when creating a lesson plan. This is important to ensure that students are interested in joining the activities and engaging with the teachers and peers during learning sessions. (C) 2020 Published by European Publisher.