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The teacher is the cornerstone and leader of the entire educational process. His professional development reflects a significant basis for education development. Appropriate opportunities must be provided to continuously develop his professional performance in specialization and teaching to raise his professional and personal efficiency. Teacher professional development is a lifelong process that advances his knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and abilities; and extends his pre-service experiences to keep pace with the most recent educational trends.
Teaching and learning science are distinguished from other subjects by a rapidly developing knowledge base, which widely concentrates on life issues related to scientific and technical applications. Teaching with the integrated approach between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) reflects one of the most significant global approaches in preparing, presenting, and building curricula, which the science teachers must master. It represents an interface approach based on knowledge integration. It represents an interface approach based on knowledge integration. Several countries such as the USA, England, South Korea, and South Africa utilized this approach. Countries and educators are interested in STEM as it is concerned with problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and other twenty-first-century skills because it has a positive impact on the international test results as TIMSS/ PISA (Deakin University, 2020; Yildirim, 2018).
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia keeps pace with modern global trends, which is evident through adapting the STEM approach to ensure a qualitative transformation in the performance of the Saudi educational system and to improve students' performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (King Abdullah project for education development, 2020). The strong relationship between the STEM approach and the Kingdom's vision “2030” revolves around bridging the gap between scientific achievements and the labor market in the disciplines of science, technology, and engineering. In this regard, the Ministry of Education issued a decision to establish the center for developing STEM education based on the decision to approve the National Transformation Program. The center provides several professional development programs in cooperation with the national center for Educational Professional development and relevant authorities for preparing teachers and practitioners in the STEM field.
Teachers' attitudes play an essential role in their teaching tasks' effectiveness and choice of teaching practices (Handal & Herrington, 2003). Besides, these attitudes towards various teaching methods and approaches are also a decisive factor in their teaching performance. STEM education programs do not always go smoothly because teacher education programs rarely provide teachers with the needed courses to apply this approach properly. Kocakaya & Ensari (2018) noted that implementing any new educational approach such as STEM entrance is highly dependent on teachers' attitudes. Some studies have focused on teachers' attitudes towards the STEM approach and its relationship to other variables, all of which asserted the significance of developing teachers' attitudes towards the STEM approach (Thibaut et al., 2018; Kan, 2018; Al Salami et al., 2017; Hackman et al.,2021).
Although one of the main goals of STEM education is the development of scientific knowledge, previous efforts to measure scientific knowledge have not adequately attempted to link literacy variables to success in STEM fields. Therefore, attention to literacy related to the STEM approach is a necessity for science teachers and students as a learning outcome in STEM approach curricula. In this concern, various studies have focused on literacy in relation to the STEM approach and its development through many methods and measures that differ in their basic dimensions; and all of them emphasized the importance of developing literacy within the STEM approach for both the teacher and the student alike. (Zollman, 2012; Leu et al., 2015; Storksdieck, 2016; Techakosit & Nilsook, 2018; Arifin et al., 2021).