Conceptual integration within the context of stem education

Date

2026-7

Author

Yiğit Dönmezoğulları, Ümran

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The ability to integrate knowledge and ways of thinking across disciplines has become a central goal of contemporary STEM education. Despite this emphasis, limited research has examined how students from different educational programmes integrate disciplinary knowledge when responding to real-world problems. This study investigated differences in conceptual integration between students educated within the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme and the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) curriculum. The study employed a causal- comparative mixed-methods design involving 200 upper-secondary science students from IB Diploma Programme and MoNE curriculum in Grades 11 and 12. Student responses were analyzed using an analytical rubric based on Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002) Conceptual Blending Theory, and qualitative classifications were converted into quantitative scores for comparison. The findings showed that students following the IB curriculum demonstrated higher levels of conceptual integration than students following the MoNE curriculum. The difference was most evident at the Single- Scope level, suggesting that the IBDP group was more likely to transfer reasoning structures across disciplinary domains. The difference was also more pronounced in Grade 12, indicating that sustained exposure to interdisciplinary learning may support integrative thinking. Across both groups, Engineering and Science were the most frequently combined disciplines, whereas Mathematics played only a limited role. The study highlights the value of Conceptual Blending Theory for examining interdisciplinary thinking and suggests that curriculum design may influence students’ conceptual integration.

Subject Keywords

Conceptual blending theory, Conceptual integration, Stem education, Interdisciplinary learning, International baccalaureate

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/120678

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis