The effect of turkish students’ motivational beliefs on their metacognitive self-regulation in Physics

Participants

The study was carried out with 187 Turkish preservice teachers taking an introductory physics course. Of the introductory physics course students who participated in the study, 36 were from the department of mathematics education, 26 were from the department of chemistry education, 28 were from the department of biology education, 44 were from the department of elementary science education and 53 were from the department of elementary mathematics education. Fifty two percent of the preservice teachers took physics classes in their first year and the rest of the preservice teachers took physics classes in their second year. 77% of the participants were females. The mean age was 20.

Data Collection Tools

Metacognitive Self-Regulation in Physics Scale (MSRP)

In the study, the self-regulation subscale of the metacognitive strategies scale of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, which was developed by Pintrich, Smith, Garcia and McKeachie (1991), was used in order to determine the introductory physics course students’ motivation and learning strategies. MSRP is a seven point Likert type scale ranging from “not at all true of me” to “very true of me”. The minimum and maximum scores that a student could receive from this 12 item scale varied between 12 and 84. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the metacognitive self-regulation subscale of the original scale was α= .79. A sample item from the scale is: “When I study for this physics course, I set goals for myself in order to direct my activities in each study period.”

This scale adapted into Turkish by Sungur (2004). Sungur reported adapted version of this instrument as valid and reliable instrument (Sungur, 2004). The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the adapted scale was found to be α= .81 (Sungur, 2004). In the present study, the Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the MSRP was calculated as α= .79

Achievement Motivation in Physics Scale (AMP)

The Achievement Motivation Scale, which was developed by Cavallo, Rozman and Potter (2004), was used in order to determine the introductory physics course students’ achievement goals and self-efficacies in physics. The achievement motivation scale in physics, which consists of 14 items, has 3 subscales: the Learning Goal subscale (LG) consisting of 5 items mainly reflects the desire of the individual to learn, the Performance Goal subscale (PG) consisting of 5 items mainly reflects the desire of the individual to get a high mark and the Self-Efficacy Belief subscale (SE) consisting of 4 items reflect the individual’s belief regarding his or her own ability to succeed in learning physics. The scale is a four point Likert type ranging from “I strongly agree” to “I strongly disagree”. The minimum and maximum scores that a student could receive from the scale vary between 5 and 20 for the learning goal and performance goal subscales and between 4 and 16 for the self-efficacy subscale. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of the scale were α= .94 for the learning goal subscale, α= .82 for the performance goal subscale and α= . 89 for the self-efficacy subscale. Sample items from the learning goal, performance goal and self-efficacy belief subscales of the scale are as follows respectively: “One of my primary goals in this class is to understand the science activities that we do”, “One of my primary goals in this class is to get a good grade, even if I don’t learn anything new”, “I am confident I can do well on the physics problems we are given in this class”. The adaptation of the achievement motivation scale into Turkish was performed by Çalışkan (2003). The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of the scale adapted into Turkish are α= .79 for the learning goal subscale, α= .70 for the performance goal subscale, and α= . 60 for the self-efficacy subscale.

In the present study, the Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients were calculated as α= .78 for the learning goal subscale, α= .59 for the performance goal subscale, and α= . 62 for the self-efficacy subscale.