A Study on Scientific Experience and Motivation to Learn Science of Elementary Students

초등학생의 과학 경험과 과학 학습 동기에 대한 연구

This research examined the elementary students' level of motivation to learn science and analyzed correlation between scientific experiences and the motivations to learn science. 216 of elementary students in the 5th grade and 207 of elementary students in the 6th grade were surveyed with questionnaire composed of Likert criteria and scientific motivation questionnaire(SMQ), and the results were analyzed by SPSS 18.0 statistics program. The results of this research are as following : First, elementary school students' level of scientific experiences appeared quite low, and boys appeared to have more scientific experiences than girls. For more specific areas, the experiences were more from outside of school rather than inside, and experiences from science class. Second, elementary students' level of motivation to learn science stood relatively high, and boys showed higher level of motivation to learn science than girls. For more specific areas, the level of motivation from internal motivation area was the highest and the lowest was that from the area of anxiety about exams. Third, the scientific experiences and motivation to learn science showed highly static correlation. Experiences both from inside and outside of the school were significantly correlated to the motivation to learn science, and those from outside of the school had higher correlation with the motivation to learn science. Therefore, the scientific experiences should be recognized to play an important role for improvement of the level of motivation to learn science, and the efforts should be made to provide the elementary students with high-quality scientific experiences to develop their level of motivation to learn science.