Abstract:

STEM is an acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) used for describing a way of thinking and action/work: to think and act as a scientist, as a technologist, as an engineer, or as a mathematician, respectively.

This paper presents an aspect from a boarder research: students’ opinions on how the university relates to STEM. The respondents involved in the research study specializations from school education at bachelor or master level, 223 students. The research instrument was a questionnaire with 68 5-level Likert-scale items structured in 6 fields of interest, as the importance of STEM/STEAM/STREAM Education, the particularities of the student interested in STEM, didactic approaches based on STEM, the openness of the university towards STEM.

We have selected 17 items related with the openness of the university towards STEM Education. The results collected identifies a bipolar model of university reporting to STEM Education. At the first pole there are the respondents’ beliefs related with STEM Education and about how the university should relate to the STEM, and the second one identifies the university’s STEM Education practices.

As regarding the first pole, students believe that teachers should encourage students’ interest towards STEM domains (M=4.34), future teachers should have a discipline focusing on integrating different STEM domains (M=4.15), and students, for developing STEM skills, need special conditions (M=4.05). At the second pole the most agreed affirmations by the students were: at some courses students could demonstrates more STEM related knowledge, skills and values than the other courses (M=3.98), some courses requires more STEM skills from students than the other courses (M=3.87), and the formation of interdisciplinary concepts in students through integrated approaches of STEM domains represents an important goal in our university (M=3.67).

Keywords:

STEM Education, university, students' opinion.