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STEM education has become a cornerstone of 21st-century learning, sparking curiosity, creativity, and practical reasoning in young learners. In the early primary grades, STEM-based approaches help students bridge the gap between different disciplines and apply their knowledge to real-life challenges. This study aimed to design and implement a STEM-based instructional unit for grades one to three in Saudi elementary schools, examining its effectiveness in developing problem-solving skills across four key areas: identifying the problem, generating possible solutions, implementing those solutions, and evaluating the outcomes. Adopting a quasi-experimental design, the study involved 46 students randomly selected from three public elementary schools in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. The intervention consisted of a nine-lesson unit that integrated science, mathematics, engineering, and technology through activities tailored specifically to the developmental level of young learners. Data were collected using an oral problem-solving test aligned with STEM processes. The findings revealed that the STEM-based unit significantly boosted students’ overall problem-solving abilities. The most notable gains were seen in implementation skills, followed by problem identification, solution generation, and finally evaluation skills. These results suggest that hands-on, exploratory learning fosters a child's ability to apply and test their ideas even before they can systematically assess them. Ultimately, the study highlights how STEM-integrated learning cultivates inquiry, reasoning, and confidence in tackling real-world problems from the very start of schooling. Looking ahead, these results underscore the importance of expanding STEM instruction in Saudi primary education through teacher training and curriculum innovation
Ismail et al. (Thu,) studied this question.