Investigation of the relationship between secondary school students' perceptions of the science learning environment and their motivations to learn science

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between secondary school students' perceptions of the science learning environment and their motivation to learn science. Additionally, secondary school students' perceptions of their learning environment and their motivation to learn science were also examined according to gender and grade level variables. In this study, the relational survey model, which is a subtype of the survey model, was used among the quantitative research methods. Within the scope of this study, the data were collected electronically from 450 students at secondary school level (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades) with similar sociocultural and socioeconomic structures in 18 cities in various regions of Turkiye in the spring semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. "Constructivist Learning Environment Perceptions", "Science Motivation Scale" and a personal information form prepared by the researcher were used as data collection tools in this study. In order to analyze the data SPSS 22.0 package program was used. Based on the results of the analysis, descriptive analyzes were first determined for the relationship between the secondary school students' motivation to learn science and their perceptions of the learning environment considering gender and class level independent variables, and then inferential analyzes were carried out. Two-way analysis of variance was performed for inferential analyses. As a result of the analysis, it was found that secondary school students' perceptions of the learning environment in the science course were close to the constructivist learning environment. The results revealed that there was no statistically significant difference in the perceptions of the science learning environment of secondary school students in terms of gender and grade levels. When secondary school students' perceptions of the learning environment were analyzed in terms of factors, no statistically significant difference was found in terms of gender and grade level. Similar findings were also obtained from the motivation scores to learn science. No significant differences were found when both total score and factor scores were analyzed in terms of gender and grade level. Based on the post hoc analyzes, only fifth-grade female students' extrinsic motivation to learn science scores were significantly different from the eighth-grade female students' extrinsic motivation to learn science. The coefficient between the two total variables was found to be 0.662, indicating that the variables were significantly and highly correlated. The canonical correlation coefficient calculated between the two variable sets was 0.72 and the explained variance was 51.84%. As the learning environments are more constructivist, students can express their ideas easily in more democratic environments, and their learning motivation increases as they associate what they learn with daily life.