An Investigation the Gender Difference into the Status of Intrinsic Motivation towards Science Learning Among Intermediate Science Students

Abstract

Motivation is the internal state that arouses, directs, and sustains goal-oriented behavior. In particular, motivation to learn refers to the disposition of students to find academic activities relevant and worthwhile who try to derive the intended benefits from them. In studying the motivation to learn science, researchers examine why students strive to learn science, how intensively they strive, and what beliefs, feelings, and emotions characterize them in this process. Motivated learners are thus self regulated learners who attempt to monitor and control their own learning. Intrinsic motivation and personal relevance is major motivational component that appear to influence self-regulated learning. The purpose of the study is to investigate the gender differences into the status of intrinsic motivation and personal relevance towards science learning among intermediate science students. A sample of 600 intermediate science students from Punjab (Pakistan), in which 300 males and 300 females were serve as the sample of the study which were selected through two phase cluster sampling. The 30-item Science Motivation Questionnaire developed by Glynn and Koballa (2006) was used to measure intrinsic motivation and personal relevance scores towards science. The scores were calculated and summarized through mean and standard deviation. The significance of difference between mean scores of male and female intermediate students was measured by t-test (two-tailed). The result revealed that male and female science students did not differ in science motivation, however female science students were found some what better in their motivation towards science than males.