Investigating the effect of 5E-based STEM education in solar energy context on creativity and academic achievement of female junior high school students

Effective science teaching by providing students with the necessary knowledge, attitude and skills can prepare them to live in a community and face its challenges. One of the most important topics in science education is energy education, and STEM is a new approach that can be used for energy education. Solar energy was used as a suitable context in STEM-based energy education to investigate its impact on the learning and creativity of female students. The study population consisted of ninth-grade female students of the junior high school in Qarchak city in the academic year 2020–2021, and the sample consisted of 143 people who were selected by random sampling in two groups of control and experimental. The students in the experimental group underwent 5E-based STEM education in the concepts of energy and energy conversion for 7 sessions (35 min for each session) as distance learning. ANCOVA analysis showed that teaching science with the 5E-based STEM approach significantly increases creativity along with science and math learning performance in female students. The effect on creativity subscales is not the same and has a greater effect on originality and elaboration. Furthermore, There is an overlap of 50% between the top people (5%) in science and math with the top people (5%) in overall creativity in the experimental group. This overlap reaches its maximum value (75%) in the flexibility subscale.