Interaction of Student Motivation with Contextual Approach and 5e Learning Cycle in Physics

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to investigate in what way students’ motivation in physics prior to the treatments of experimental study influences the effects on contextual approach and 5E learning cycle on their achievement. The data comes from a factorialdesign-research from which the effects of context-based approach and 5E learning cycle on 11 grade students’ achievement in simple electric circuits in a physics class are explored. The Jouhnson-Neyman technique was used for testing the hypothesis of the study. The results are quite interesting. Students with high motivation in physics (above 2.81 out of 5.00) were observed to benefit more from the non-contextual physics instruction, while the students with low motivation in physics (below 1.85 out of 5.00) were observed to benefit more from the contextual physics instruction. Between these boundary values, effects of contextual and non-contextual physics instruction seem not to be different. For the interaction of motivation with 5E learning cycle, no significant interaction could be detected. That is to say, all the students with different levels of motivation in physics benefitted similarly from the 5E learning cycle.