Umeå University's logo

The study aims to assess the relative importance of a large number of variables for predicting students’ positive-activating emotions during mathematics learning. Participants were 668 first-year upper secondary school students from 33 schools of different sizes and locations. Two questionnaires were distributed, one assessing students’ perceptions and beliefs about their learning situation in mathematics in general, and the other assessing the characteristics of a particular mathematics lesson and the students’ emotional experiences during this lesson. Single-construct and multivariate models for predicting students’ emotions were computed. The results show that the multivariate models were the most efficient, predicting as much as 59 % of the variance in students’ emotional experiences. The two most important constructs were students’ type of motivation and perceived degree of learning, which together predicted 48 % of the students’ emotions. Single-construct models predicted, at most, 36 %. The relative and absolute predictive ability of different motivational constructs are reported. The relationships between constructs and their implications for teaching are discussed.

Background: Students' motivation for science declines over the early teenage years, and students often find school science difficult and irrelevant to their everyday lives. This paper asks whether creating opportunities to connect school science to authentic science can have positive effects on student motivation.

Purpose: To understand how authentic science experiences can affect students' motivation for science and students’ goals, values, beliefs and attitudes towards science.

Programme description: The Medicine Hunt brought scientists and students together to find bacteria that produce secondary metabolites with antibiotic effects. Scientists received help with collecting soil samples and teachers and students took an active role in research and worked with solving an authentic problem as a part of their ordinary school science over a course of six months.

Sample: About 388 students from 18 lower-secondary school classes participating in the Medicine Hunt. Students were enrolled in grade seven to nine (13–15 years old). At this stage, science is compulsory, and all students follow the same science course. The classes represented different geographical regions of Sweden.

Design and methods: Students filled in motivation questionnaires before and after the Medicine Hunt. Paired t-tests were used to evaluate how students’ intrinsic motivation, goals, values, beliefs and attitudes towards science changed over the project period.

Results: Students' intrinsic motivation for school science and plans for future participation in science remained unchanged during the period they participated in the Medicine Hunt, and students' goals, values and attitudes followed the well-documented pattern of decline. Thus, the authentic experience can arrest the well-described decline for some motivation-related factors.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that the authentic experience can arrest some aspects of the decline in motivation for science in the teenage years. The paper discusses the processes around students' motivation in relation to authentic experiences.

This study aims to understand how students experience taking part in an authentic research project that aimed to increase motivation for science and understanding of research. It also aims to evaluate how these experiences are related to the science content and scientific way of working introduced in the authentic research project. Twenty-four students from three Swedish lower-secondary schools were interviewed. These students were selected to provide variation in motivation for school science. Analysis of the interviews shows that most students enjoyed taking part in the project, and that students referred mainly to reasons connected to science education; the authentic nature of the task, the hands-on and inquiry-based approach, and the opportunity to learn science. It further shows that even though the three teachers had different approach and the students were selected to get largest possible variation in motivation for school science, there were few differences in students’ experiences.

Authentic projects, where students meet, visit or work as scientists, are getting more common in schools. Little is known about the implementation of such projects and what effect the implementation has on students’ experiences and outcomes. This paper presents a study of twelve students in three classes that participate in same student-teacher-scientist partnership (STSP) in their Swedish secondary-science classrooms. The study includes three levels: the resources the teachers have, the opportunities for motivation through competence, autonomy and relatedness students are given, and students’ initiatives, group work and outcomes. The purpose of this study is to explore the process with which an authentic project is implemented in the science classroom and how the implementation can contribute to student motivation. The results show that all teachers spend the main part of lesson time with student-centred activities and that they all give opportunities for feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness, but that they do it to different extent. Most students take initiatives towards science and/or procedure, have good dynamics of group work and have good outcomes. No clear patterns between students’ contextual motivation and their initiatives, group work or outcomes were seen, however, students in classrooms with high support were more able to overcome issues and succeed with the task. It can be concluded that the implementation is a key step when introducing authentic science in school and that it is both possible and advisable to design authentic science activities that can be part of the curriculum and reach a broad group of students. However, a good balance between novelty in topic and methods -through for example autonomy- and support, -through for example clear instructions and procedural support- should be a key component in the implementation, especially to support less self-regulated students. Implications for STSPs and similar authentic projects, as well as for other classroom situations, are discussed.