Eureka! Institutional Repository

In recent years, there has globally been a growing interest in educating students in science and the methods used teaching them. This interest stems from the methods used to teach the students these sciences and therefore aims to better these educational methods with the goal to increase the overall quality of knowledge acquired. Up until recently, these sciences have been taught separately and in a detached manner one from the other without the student be given the necessary foundation to understand how they are actually correlated. In short, they are taught in a dull way that does not manage to hold a student's interest, with the student often becoming lost as to how to apply their knowledge in a real life scenario. As a result, students are indifferent to science, their respective professional fields and the career paths they may offer. In many countries this situation has come to a change with more and more of them re-approaching the way these sciences are taught, in an effort to lay the foundation of making their teaching much more efficient and therefore attracting the interest of many more students. STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) is a breakthrough way of teaching in which students are faced with both science and everyday problems and are asked to combine their knowledge of at least two different scientific fields in order to solve them, therefore participating in a more active way thoroughly. STEM education has been adopted by educating systems in Europe, America and Asia and in our country it is being applied in private and public schools as an additional after school activity. In this study we are going to present what STEM education is as well as study the thoughts of the parents and the teachers on the benefits that can come from its appliance. The results showed that both teachers and parents believe that the current way of teaching is not as effective and that many benefits can come from the appliance of STEM education