Students motivation for science learning

We take nature and everyday life phenomena for granted. Children's eyes observe the world around them with interest and want to »absorb« as much knowledge as possible from the environment. We know that while going to school children's curiosity declines and learning becomes an obligation. How to encourage students to see science school subjects as an important part of life? What causes the decline in their motivation to learn? This thesis deals with the area of motivation in relation to learning science. The theoretical part researches the conception of motivation from the point of view of different authors and in the field of science learning. The empirical part presents the study, which was carried out in four Slovenian gymnasiums. Study included 518 students with the average age of 16 years. They completed the Science motivation questionnaire – SMQ (Glynn and Koballa, 2006), and answered two additional questions. The results showed that students are fairly motivated to learn science. They are mostly external motivated and do not value science on a personal level. Statistically there are significant differences between genders in the level of motivation of the students. In comparison with the girls, the boys are more intrinsically motivated for learning science and science is more important to them. An interesting finding is that there are also significant differences in the school success of the students. On average female students perform better than male students in science subjects. Students are motivated by positive behaviour of the teacher and lessons with various tools and experiments. All components of motivation, which affect the motivation of students to learn science, are positively connected to the school success of the students in the fields of chemistry, biology and physics. Except anxiety, which is negatively connected – on average more anxious students achieve less in science subjects