Effects of Stem Learning on Critical and Creative Thinking Skills: A Meta-Analysis

The twenty-first century is marked by increasingly sophisticated advances in science and technology. Critical thinking and creative thinking skills are skills needed in this century. In addition, STEM is also needed to practice these 21st-century skills. However, the reality in the field found that students critical thinking and creative thinking skills are still low. The next fact is that there is still little application of STEM-integrated learning. The solution to overcome these problems is STEM-integrated learning to improve students critical and creative thinking skills. The purpose of this study was to describe the effect size of students critical and creative thinking skills on STEM-integrated learning. The research method used is a meta-analysis. The data collected were 20 national and international articles related to the effect of STEM learning on students critical and creative thinking skills. The strong or weak influence of STEM learning on critical and creative thinking skills is determined by the size of the effect. The results of the meta-analysis showed that the level of education, learning models, and learning materials showed that the influence of STEM learning on students critical and creative thinking skills was in the high category. This research provides an opportunity for future research to develop STEM-integrated learning to improve other twenty-first-century skills at every level of education, relate them to learning models, and apply them to every learning material.