Correlation of Learning Motivation and Conceptual Change in Science : A Case Study on the Lower Secondary Students' Conception of Digestion and Absorption

Abstract

In this study, based on the many ideas of E.L. Deci and R. deCharms, we clarified a problem and the prospects teachers should have made through science learning, by arranging factors of motivation to affect scientific conceptual change and interpreting those factors as motivational factors in the science classes. We submitted below a policy of three strategies. (1) The condition to bring up "autonomy (:students realize they can experiment/observe, rearrange and consider the results with a prospect of learning by themselves and push forward their own learning by themselves)" is a necessity for the "rearranging of the unit structure" and" extraction and the presentation of the problem as an important pillar of the unit". (2) The condition to bring up "competence (:students realize they can put use the knowledge of what they learned, by explaining the mechanism to themselves or understand the teachers' explanation)" is a necessity for "a demand of the expression such as a thought with the consistency or the image" and" the consensus formation of a scientific concept". (3) The condition to bring up "relatedness (:students realize they can relate their own thoughts to another person and develop their own thoughts by listening to the thoughts of others and ask questions or doubts freely anytime)" is a necessity for "the evaluation of the thoughts of others by learning oneself" and" the interchange of the thought in the group".