Student's Motivation and Strategy in Learning Science

학생들의 과학 학습 동기 및 전략

The purposes of this study were to investigate the intercorrelations among various motivational patterns and learning strategies and to examine the differences in motivation and strategy usage in terms of students' science achievement level, gender, and grade. A questionnaire on achievement goal, self-efficacy, self-concept of ability, expectancy, value, causal attributions, and learning strategies was administered to 360 junior high/high school students (178 males, 182 females). Students who adopted performance-oriented goal tended not to be task oriented. Task-oriented students had high levels of self-efficacy, high self-concept of ability, and expectancies for future performance in science. They also valued science and attributed thier failures to the lack of effort. However, performance-oriented students evaluated their ability negatively, did not value science, and attributed thier failures to uncontrollable causes. With respect to learning strategy, task-oriented students tended to use deep-level strategy, whereas performance-oriented students tended to use surface-level strategy and not to use deep-level strategy. High-achieving students, boys, and junior high school students were more task-oriented, evaluated their ability more positively, and valued science more than low-achieving students, girls, and high school students, respectively. High-achieving students and boys also used deep-level strategy more than each of their counterparts. However, no significant difference in learning strategy was found between junior high school students and high school students. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.