An Investigation of Indonesian In-Service Mathematics Teachers’ Perception and Attitude Toward STEAM Education

Abstract

To face the global challenge, people need to master mathematics comprehensively which one of the ways is to integrate it with other fields such as science, technology, engineering and arts. Therefore, the implementation of STEAM Education approach is considered to be essential for in-service mathematics teachers especially in Indonesia. This study aimed to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of Indonesian in-service mathematics teachers towards the application of STEAM-based education in the teaching mathematics. Cross-sectional survey was used in this study engaging 110 respondents along the survey. The result was that STEAM Education is nor well-known by the majority of the respondents. For the perception, those who knew STEAM Education mostly believed that each topic of this approach was connected to each other, otherwise for those who did not know STEAM Education mostly said that each topic was stand alone. As for the attitude of respondents also divided into two, the first group of respondents stated that STEAM Education will be increasingly popular in the future and they will feel happy if teaching mathematics with STEAM Education. Whereas the second group of respondents looked more pessimistically related to projections of future application of STEAM Education that would be less popular, not to mention that they would feel unexcited to teach mathematics with the STEAM Education approach.