Abstract:

The present study was conducted to investigate into motivation levels of 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students from secondary school toward science learning; to determine the correlation between motivation and academic success; to offer a suggestion for improving their levels of motivation by investigating whether there is a significant difference between the scores of motivation towards science learning with respect to the some variables such as gender, mother education, father education, mother working status, household income, liking science course, participation level to science course, usage frequency of laboratory and frequency of experiment–activity. A survey model is used in the research. The research was conducted on 1629 students from the eight public secondary schools in Ankara City along the academic year of 2015-2016. “The Scale for Motivation toward Science Learning” was used to determine the motivation level. Independent Samples t-Test, One-Way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation Coefficient were used to analyze for the data. As a result of the study, it was determined that usage frequency of laboratory, mother education, father education, mother working status and household income level variables were not statistically significant on secondary school students’ motivation levels. Furthermore, it was concluded that gender, liking science course, frequency of experiment – activity and participation level to science course variables were statistically significant on motivation level. In addition it was concluded that motivation decreases from 5th to 8th grade significantly and a positive and statistically significant correlation was determined between the motivation and success.

Keywords: