Acta Didactica Napocensia
Volume 10 Number 4, pages 55-62
Published: 25 December 2017
Roxana-Alexandra
Popa, Liliana Ciascai
Abstract: STEM is the acronym of Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics fields. STEM education refers both to teaching and
learning in the above-mentioned disciplines, but especially to teaching and
learning a new discipline based on the integration of Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics. The present survey aims to investigate the
opinion of a sample of 110 respondents, students from Romanian universities,
taking into account: a) their experience in STEM fields during high school
studies; (b) the engineer's profession and the engineer's skills; c) the
factors that influenced their option to study one of the STEM fields. The
results show that the respondents have been interested in STEM fields since
secondary and high school; this interest determined them to choose to continue
their studies in a STEM field. Also, the majority of respondents agreed that
the choice of their university specialisation was influenced by the teachers
who taught them the subjects that they study at the university during their
school years. The data also show that the students are convinced of the
importance of the engineer's profession as well as of the engineering knowledge
and skills.
Key words: STEM, education, survey,
students, engineer.