Cultivating Students’ STEAM Competence in STEAM Education: Constructing Models and Developing Measurement Scale in Chinese primary school

To improve the quality of STEAM education and cultivate STEAM competence, the purpose of this research was designed to examine the students’ experiences in cultivating STEAM competence, which was focused on students’ engaging experience in STEAM education. Through several investigation and questionnaires to achieve this purpose, to construct an analytic hierarchy model and measurement model by employing the analytic hierarchy process and confirmatory factor analysis in R 3.3.3 and Mplus8.3. Besides, correlation analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and path analysis were also employed. The participants are the researchers, educators, and administrators (Total= 856), as well as the 4^th grade to 6^th grade students (N=1126). Summarizing the main results: (1) the dimension of students’ STEAM competence (SSC) was established through the analytic hierarchy model, which was practical cognition, interpersonal interaction, and comprehensive influence point to the individual, society, and living world. (2) the criteria and sub-criteria of SSC were modified, corrected, and determined through the analytic hierarchy model and measurement model to construct the SSC scale (SSCs), which was psychological cognition, situated learning, practical inquiry, social communication, rational decision making, creative presentation, and impact assessment. (3) the relationships between each criterion were examined through correlation analysis and path analysis. Finally, the conclusion, significance, limitations, and future work were also discussed to promote the development of students’ STEAM competence.

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