Secondary School Students' Motivation and Achievement in Combined Science

Abstract

This study investigated students’ motivation and achievement in combined science. A sample of 324 Year 11 students from eight government secondary schools in Brunei Darussalam participated in the study. Of the sample, 141 were boys and 183 were girls and their average age was 16.4 years. The motivation instrument used was adapted from the science motivation questionnaire (Glynn, Taasoobshirazi, & Brickman, 2009) and consisted of 24 items. Results show that this group of students displayed a moderate level of intrinsic motivation, personal relevance, self-determination and self-efficacy and a high level of extrinsic motivation and assessment anxiety in learning-combined science. Results also demonstrate significant differences in motivational orientations towards learning-combined science between boys and girls and between high ability and low ability students. Furthermore, correlation analyses show that there were significant positive associations between students’ motivational orientations and science achievement.