The role of motivation and perceptions about science laboratory environment on lower secondary students’ attitude towards science

The Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), Students’ Adaptive Learning Engagement Science Questionnaire (SALES) and Test of Science Related Attitudes Questionnaire (TOSRA) were employed for the purpose of this research to measure the students’ perceptions about learning environment, attitude and motivation to learn science (Fraser, 1981; Fraser & McRobbie, 1995; Velayutham & Aldridge, 2013; Velayutham, Aldridge, & Fraser, 2011). The SLEI consists of five constructs namely Student Cohesiveness, Open Endedness, Integration, Rule Clarity, and Material Environment. Each construct in SLEI consists of seven items with a total of 35 items aimed to measure the psychosocial aspects of the science laboratory learning environment. Meanwhile, SALES which aimed to measure students’ motivation in learning science consisted of 32 items. The 32 items were further categorized into 4 different constructs which include Learning Goal Orientation, Task Value, Self-Efficacy, and Self -Regulation. Lastly, TOSRA consists of seven constructs with a total of 58 items. These constructs are Social Implications of Science, Normality of Science, Attitude to Scientific Inquiry, Adoption of Science Attitudes, Enjoyment of Science Lessons, Leisure Interest in Science, and Career Interest in Science. This study was performed in two stages. In the first stage, a pilot study was conducted to ensure the reliability and validity of SLEI, SALES and TOSRA questionnaires. Once the internal consistencies of the instruments were determined in the second stage the instruments were administered to a larger sample. In Table 1 examples of items for all the constructs in three questionnaires used in this study is illustrated.

Table 1. The Example of Items for the Constructs in the Questionnaires

Questionnaires	Constructs	Example of Items
Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI)	Student Cohesiveness	I get on well with students in this laboratory class.
	Open Endedness	In this laboratory class, I am required to design my own experiments to solve a given problem.
	Integration	What I do in our regular science class is unrelated to my laboratory work
	Rule Clarity	My laboratory class has clear rules to guide my activities
	Material Environment	I find that the laboratory is crowded when I am doing experiments
Students’ Adaptive Learning Engagement Science Questionnaire (SALES)	Learning Goal Orientation	One of my goals is to learn as much as I can
	Task Value	What I learn can be used in my daily life
	Self-Efficacy	I can master the skills that are taught
	Self-Regulation	Even when tasks are uninteresting, I keep working
Test of Science Related Attitudes Questionnaire (TOSRA)	Social Implications of Science	Science can help to make the world a better place in the future
	Normality of Scientists	Scientists are about as fit and healthy as other people
	Attitude to Scientific Inquiry	I would prefer to find out why something happens by doing an experiment than by being told
	Adoption of Science Attitudes	I enjoy reading about things which disagree with my previous ideas
	Enjoyment of Science Lessons	Science lessons are fun
	Leisure Interest in Science	I would like to belong to a science club
	Career Interest in Science	When I leave school, I would like to work with people who make discoveries in science

The questionnaires were adopted due to its high internal consistency and validity. The SLEI, SALES and TOSRA have been validated and used by several researchers such as Wong and Fraser (1994, 1997); McRobbie, Fraser, & Giddings (1991), Henderson, Fisher, & Fraser (2000), Karpudewan & Chua (2016), Welch (2010), and Yetiser & Ceylan (2015) in their studies involving large number of students. This provided a strong foundation for researchers to adopt these questionnaires in future research related to laboratory learning environment, motivation in learning science and science attitude.

Pilot study

In order to ensure that the original questionnaire developed was suitable to be used in the Malaysian context, a pilot study was conducted with 60 (30 Form 2 and 30 Form 3) students from one of the non-participating secondary school. The original version of SLEI was provided with five options for students to choose from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always). Similarly, for SALES and TOSRA it ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree with five points Likert scale. However, in the modified version of SLEI, SALES, and TOSRA the neutral scale has been eliminated. The main reason for not providing the neutral middle choice is to force the respondents to decide whether they agree or disagree with the items. Many survey respondents chose the neutral option on the Likert scale as they felt reluctant to express their own opinions, and this can have a significant impact on the results.

The Cronbach's alpha reliability values obtained from the pilot study ranges from 0.89 to 0.95. Meanwhile, the alpha value for all the constructs in each questionnaire was more than 0.70. According to Nunnally (1978), value above 0.7 was considered reliable and suitable to be used in the real study. Since the reliability index for items in the modified SLEI, SALES, and TOSRA were reported high, the modified version of SLEI, SALES, and TOSRA was used in the real data collection. Table 2 illustrates the Alpha Cronbach values for the instruments used in the study. A total of three secondary science teachers with more than five years of teaching experiences volunteered to validate the instruments. These three teachers checked for the content validity of the instruments and agreed that the content is suitable to the Malaysian context.

Table 2. The Alpha Cronbach Values for the Instruments Used in the Study.

Instruments	Alpha Cronbach Values
Science Laboratory Environment Inventory	0.89
Students’ Adaptive Learning Engagement in Science	0.92
Test of Science-Related Attitudes	0.94

In the real study, a total of 1003 lower secondary students between 13-15 years old from different schools in Northern Region of Malaysia (Kedah and Penang) participated. The participating schools were randomly selected from these two states. The schools are government funded schools well equipped with basic amenities such as well-equipped science laboratories, textbooks, and computer laboratory. Additionally, in government-funded schools, science is taught by well-trained qualified science teachers who obtained their bachelor’s degree in science education from local public universities.

At the time of this study, the samples were in Form 2 (Grade 8) and Form 3 (Grade 9). Students from government-funded schools have equal opportunity to access to all the facilities provided in the school. For these group of students, science is a compulsory subject. Weekly science lessons were taught for three times for a total of 200 minutes. At lower secondary level science curriculum encompasses basic elements of physic, chemistry and biology. The curriculum provides a foundation for the students to study physic, chemistry and biology as separate curriculum at upper secondary level. The lower secondary examination result determines whether they will be in science or arts stream at their higher secondary level. As such it is appropriate to investigate these students attitude towards learning science, motivation in science learning and science learning environment so that the findings of this study will be a guide for the teachers to formulate better science learning.