CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
___________________________________________________________________________

1.0 Introduction

Science is a way of knowing and exploring the natural world. Science learning should not
rest alone on the terminology, laws and equations memorized by the students. However,
nowadays, science education is becoming completely perfunctory- people are studying not for
knowledge but for the sake of examination grades. In the modern world, some knowledge of
science is essential for everyone (Duschl et al., 2007). Learning science for daily life is an
inevitable need in todays world. Learning science begins at elementary grades and should
continue for a life-long time. The goal of science education is to enhance all students scientific
literacy in grasping essential science concepts, to understand the nature of science, to realize the
relevance of science and technology to their lives, and to willingly continue their science study in
school, or beyond school (National Research Council [NRC], 1996).

While science education research has devoted extensive attention to students

misconceptions or naive theories, students motivation in learning science in school should also
be given attention. Motivation is related to an individuals inner force and interest to accomplish
a learning task. When individuals acknowledge themselves as capable of performing successfully
and can control the task given in meaningful ways then they will be intrinsically motivated.
Learning science through inquiry instruction is seen as one of the best way to let students learn
science with motivation as the students are not only memorizing factual information but are also

applying the facts to the development of meaningful questions. In science learning, motivation is
a key element, and this is especially critical with inquiry activities. When inquiry instruction
takes place, students will be eager to learn, fascinated by their discoveries, and enjoy asking
questions. Hence, students will get motivated.

1.1 Background of the study

In science learning, science educators has realized that teaching all students science and
cultivating them to be scientifically literate citizens through inquiry-based curriculum are the
goals for many national science curriculum reform (American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS), 1993; National Research Council (NRC), 1996; Ministry of Education
(MOE), 2000). It has been the main concern for science educators to help students grasp
essential science concepts, to understand the nature of science, to realize the relevance of science
and technology to their lives, and to willingly continue their science study in school, or beyond
school (National Research Council [NRC] 1996).

Hence, it is very important to take into account not only student cognition, but also the
affective component to cognition. One of the affective components that are important is
motivation because students motivation plays an important role in their conceptual change
processes, critical thinking, learning strategies and science learning achievement. In many
research, students motivation towards science learning has been investigated in areas of selfefficacy (Joo, Bong & Choi, 2000; Schoon & Boone, 1998), learning goal (Shimoda et al., 2002),
learning strategies (Chalupa et al., 2001), and learning environment (Hanrahan, 1998).

Students motivation toward science has been decreased after they enrolled in school
(Tuan & Chin, 2000), thus it is important for science educators to boost students motivation
towards science regardless the learning style of each student. Inquiry-based teaching provided an
open learning environment with opportunities for students to explore and construct meaningful
knowledge through hands-on experiences, problem solving and laboratory-based investigation
that is followed by exercises related to expand the activity. It also can build up students abilities
to learn science beyond school. It is very important to investigate how students have their
motivation affected by inquiry science teaching. Inquiry instruction can enhance students
understanding of the nature of science, science achievement, science process skills, knowledge
construction, and discourse communication (Ertepinar & Geban, 1996; Gibson and Chase, 2002)

1.2 Statement of problem

The teaching strategies being implemented in classroom today has been one of the causes
that makes the students learn passively and less motivated towards the science learning.
Teaching all students science and cultivating them to be scientifically literate citizens is the goals
for many science curriculum reforms. However, students motivation toward science has been
decreased after they enrolled in school (Tuan & Chin, 2000). Thus, it is very important for
science educators to enhance students motivation by providing inquiry-based learning
environment.

In order to response to this issue, the study is to boost the students motivation towards
science learning by encouraging them through inquiry instruction. Therefore, an inquiry
laboratory investigation of Electricity topic will be exposed to the Year 4 elementary school

students to see the benefit of inquiry teaching on students motivation. The difference in
students motivation is measured through SMSTL questionnaire after they experience the inquiry
instruction.

1.3 Objectives of the study

The problem addressed here is the deterioration in students motivation towards science
learning after they enrolled in school. Hence, several objectives have been specified. The
objectives of this study are as follows:
1. To study the differences on students motivation towards science learning between
inquiry instruction and traditional teaching.

1.4 Research Questions

The research described here addressed some questions allied with the problem. The study
mainly focuses on the following specific questions:
1. What are the levels of students motivation in pre-test?
2. What are the levels of students motivation in post-test?
3. What are the differences of students motivation towards science learning after they
experienced inquiry and traditional science instruction?

1.5 Research hypothesis

Ho: There is no significant difference in students motivation using the traditional science
instruction and inquiry-based instruction

1.6 Significance of the study

The result from this study suggests that inquiry instruction can promote all students in
their motivation toward science learning. This study will provide new perspectives of nature
science learning environment in school by which to encourage the science educators to provide
opportunities to students in exploring the science concepts responsibly.

This study has significant implications for educational practice. It is appropriate for
educators to provide students the inquiry-based teaching that can also help students appreciate
better about the nature of science learning, reduce students addressing on comparing with other
peers and get attention from the teacher which they will shift their goal to address their own
learning. Finally, students self-fulfilment will also be increased after participating in the inquiry
activity.

This study point out new teaching strategy needs to address on different learning styles of
students cognitive and affective perspectives. The inquiry instruction able to provide students

more challenging and meaningful tasks to engage in that increase students motivation. This
study suggests that inquiry instruction can promote all students in their motivation toward
science learning.

1.7 Conceptual and operational definitions

There are some definitions need to be clarified to avoid any perplexity in this study.

1.7.1 Inquiry instruction

Conceptual definition:
Inquiry instruction is a process where students are involved in their learning, formulate
questions, investigate widely and then build new understandings, meanings and
knowledge. That knowledge is new to the students and may be used to answer a question,
to develop a solution or to support a position or point of view.
Operational definition:
Inquiry instruction in this study indicates a teaching that starts with questions or problems
in scenarios to provide opportunities for students to participate in generating research
questions, conduct laboratory investigation, generate their own conclusions and
communicate their findings with fellow pupils.

1.7.2 Motivation
Conceptual definition:
According to Pintrich and Schunk (1996) motivation is the process whereby goaldirected activity is instigated and sustained. Motivation outcome is operationally
indicated in term of self-efficacy, science learning value, active learning strategies,
performance goal, achievement goal and learning environment stimulation (Tuan et al.,
2005). Motivation is related to an individuals inner force to accomplish a learning task
Operational definition:
In this study, motivation highlights the ability of students to get engaged throughout the
learning process and capable of performing successfully and can control or regulate the
situation in meaningful ways. When students pay attention to the learning task and have
learning strategies to relate new knowledge to their previous knowledge, then they are
motivated.

1.7.3 Traditional instruction

Conceptual definition:
Traditional instruction is concerned with the teacher being the controller of the learning
environment. Power and responsibility are held by the teacher and they play the role of
instructor and decision maker. In short, the traditional teacher views that it is the teacher
that causes learning to occur.
7

Operational definition:
In this study, traditional instruction refers as a teacher-centered teaching strategy in
which the teacher delivers information through multimedia presentation. The instruction
begins with teachers lectures and presentation, students taking notes and end with
students answering exercises based on the topic.

CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

There is an important to motivate students in learning processes. Learning processes

affected by teaching processes. Teaching process must be construct students motivation to learn
without felt bored. When they process of teaching success, then the learning process will be
smooth and students able to understand concept of learning. From the study of some research,
researcher get know that scientific inquiry helps students to motivate themselves to learn science
concept.

2.1 Scientific Inquiry

According to the National Science Education Standard (NSES p.23), scientific inquiry is
the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on
the evidence derived from their work.
Its also known as the activities through which students develop knowledge and
understanding of scientific ideas, as well as an understanding of how scientists study the natural

world. Scientific inquiry is the best ways to understand science content as well as conduct an
investigation and collect evidence from a variety of sources.

2.2 Motivational in Science Inquiry

According to the Blumenfeld, Soloway, Marx, Krajcik, Guzdial, & Palincsar, 1991 said
that one of the objectives for inquiry based science is to promote students motivation for
science, not just in the classroom but as an area of interest and enjoyment outside academic.

Attitudes and beliefs such as interest, confidence in ones ability to learn, and perceived
value in the task have been associated with greater attention, behavioural engagement,
thoughtfulness, comprehension, and memory (Printrich & De Groot, 1990; Schiefele, 1991;
Tobias, 1994).

Futhermore, Blumenfeld et al., 1991 said that inquiry based science aims to foster both
personal and situational interest. Personal interest is being interested in science or in particular
science topic. Meanwhile situational interest means finding specific classes interesting.

Turner & Patrick, 2008 stated that students must be interested and motivated to learn
before learning will take place and the success can lead to motivation to learn more. From their
research they provides some evidence that teachers instructional behaviours can contribute to
10

the development of students work habits by encouraging and supporting them to participate in
classroom activities.

Rachel Mamlok-Naaman and Avi Hofstein (2011) had a research on Inquiry Teaching in
Israel: The Case of High School Chemistry Laboratories. In their research, teachers indicated
that this scientific inquiry reduced their anxiety and increased students confidence. Participants
(students) felt that they more involved in the learning processes. This statement is related to
some noted that stated these experiences provided them with opportunities to develop
independent thinking, make sense of chemical concepts and enjoy a group learning environment
(Hofstein, Levi Nahum & Shore, 2001).

When there is no motivation to learn, there is no learning (Wlodowski, 2008). So that

teaching science by inquiry will leads to the students motivation in understanding science
concepts.

11

CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY

3.0 Introduction

This chapter presents the research design and methodology employed in the present
study, which has aim to investigate the effectiveness of inquiry based teaching on student
motivation.

3.1 Design of study

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of inquiry based teaching on
student motivation. For this purpose, a pretest-post test control group and experimental group
design was used.

3.2 Selection of sample

Two class of year 4 consist of 43 students from Sekolah Kebangsaan Tanjung Keramat
will be selected as a sample. These students participate in 60 minutes inquiry science lesson of
topic conductors and non-conductors. Twenty two of Year 4 students were involves in
experimental group, this group of students will experience inquiry instruction. Another twenty
one of Year 4 students are involve in control group, they will be taught by traditional science

12

method. The sample choose in this study are regular class with mix abilities and genders. Each
pairs of control and experimental classes have similar science achievement.

Sekolah Kebangsaan Tanjung Keramat is located in Kuala Selangor town at the state of
Selangor and primarily serves residents of Kuala Selangor old town and Tanjung Keramat
village. The school has a current enrolment of 243 students.

3.3 Instruments

The study use quantitative methods in collecting data. Questionnaire is the sources of
data collection .In this study, questionnaire is use to seek view of their motivation before and
after the inquiry based lesson. Students motivation towards science learning questionnaire
(SMTSL) is used to collect data.

SMTSL will be implementing in both group in the beginning and at the end of the study.
SMTSL was developed by Tuan, Chin & Shieh (2005). They used classroom observation,
interview and survey to verify important motivation scales form students science learning.
There are two uniqueness of the SMTSL, one is the item statements are related to science
learning, another is the scales (active learning strategies, science learning value and learning
environment stimulation) can illustrate students science learning which is new than other
traditional psychology motivation questionnaires. SMTSL consist 35 items allocated in six
scales: self-efficacy, use of active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goals,
achievement goals, and learning environment stimulation. We used this questionnaire to collects
students motivation changes in the study. The Cronbach alpha was 0.89 for the entire

13

questionnaire and the subscales ranged from 0.70 to 0.89 which Nunnaly (1978) has indicated to
be an acceptable reliability.

3.4 Procedure

I. Two classes of year 4 consist of 43 students from Sekolah Kebangsaan Tanjung Keramat
will be selected as a sample. One class of twenty two students are select as an
experimental group and another one class of twenty one students are select as control
group.

II. Students in both control and experimental groups take 20 minutes to fill out students
motivation towards science learning questionnaire (SMTSL) in the beginning of the class.
This questionnaire represents pre test scores

III. Experimental groups participate in 60 minutes of inquiry lesson of topic conductors and
non conductors. Another class select as control group, they will be taught in 60 minutes
lesson by regular science teaching method.

IV. At the end of the lesson, students both in control and experimental group take another 20
minutes to fill out SMTSL questionnaire which represent post test scores. Data analyze
using descriptive statistics and t-test.

14

3.5 Data analysis

In order to answer the previous research questions on the difference between students
learning motivation in inquiry instruction and traditional science teaching, data will be analysis
included descriptive statistic analysis, t-test between pre- and post-test to compare the difference
of six scales (self efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goal,
achievement goal and learning environment stimulation) in SMTSL. T-test used to compare
different learning styles changes before and after inquiry lesson.

15

CHAPTER FOUR
ANALYSIS AND FINDING OF THE STUDY

4.0 Introduction
This chapter will focus on the analysis and interpretation of data that was collected for this study.
It is necessary to analyze the data collected in order to test the hypothesis and answer the
research questions. This chapter comprises the analysis, presentation and interpretation of the
findings resulting from this study. The analysis and interpretation data is carried out which is
based on the results of the SMTSL questionnaire, deals with a quantitative analysis of data.

4.1 Hypothesis
The purpose of this study was to study the differences on students motivation towards science
learning between inquiry instruction and traditional teaching. The following null hypothesis
guided the study.
Ho: There is no significant difference in students motivation using the traditional science
instruction and inquiry-based instruction.

4.2 Demographic details

The participants consist of two classes of year four students at Sekolah Kebangsaan Bestari Jaya
in Bestari Jaya town. A total of 57 students participated in study. 26 students participate in
traditional instructional group while the other 31 students participate in inquiry based
instructional class. According to the demographic information collected, 29 (50.9%) students
were male and 28 students (49.1%) were female.

16

Table 4.1 shows the gender distribution of the total sample used in the study and Table 4.2 shows
the gender distribution of the sample between the groups.

Table 4.1 Gender Distribution

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

male

29

50.9

50.9

female

28

49.1

49.1

Total

57

100.0

100.0

Table 4.2 Gender distribution according to groups

Group
traditional
Gender

inquiry

Total

male

14

15

29

female

12

16

28

26

31

57

Total

4.3 Pre Test and Post test scores

In accordance with the requirement of the study, two-groups pre-test, post-test research
design was adopted as explained in Chapter 3. On one hand, the pre-test was administered at the
beginning of the experiment as a regulatory means to control prior differences among
participants. On the other hand, the post-test was administered at the end of the experiment to
measure the effectiveness of the treatment, that is, the inquiry-based teaching. The statistical
17

procedures of Paired Sample T-test and Independent Sample T-test were used to evaluate the
effectiveness of the treatment.

4.3.1 Descriptive analysis for pre-test and post-test scores

A descriptive analysis is used to analyze the test scores before any inferential statistical
procedures are carried out. The information from the descriptive analysis sometimes is the single
purpose of the research, at other times it may provide the researcher with basic approach of the
results. The initial impression of the data or the information will be useful for subsequent
analysis phases of the research. The mean provides information of the average of the scores,
while the standard deviation (SD) reveals how varied a group is on a given characteristic, and
whether the characteristic is distributed broadly within the group.

For the study, the descriptive analysis for each control group (traditional teaching) and
experimental group (inquiry teaching) is computed. Before we proceed to further inferential
analysis, it is important to observe the mean for pre-test scores in both traditional and inquiry
group. Table 4.3 and table 4.4, shows that means of pre- test for control group (traditional
teaching) is 72.3600 and 72.7419 for experiment group (inquiry teaching). This shows that the
students motivational level in pre-test (before the treatment takes place) is approximately equal.
It is important to keep the mean for both pre-test at equivalent level to make sure there is no
difference in motivational level between all participants before the experiment is carried out.
Thus, the findings could determine that the significant differences found in test later are not due
to chance but due to the treatment, that is, due to the inquiry-based instruction. Descriptive
details of the pre-test and post-test scores for each traditional and inquiry group are provided in
Table 4.3 and Table 4.4.

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Table 4.3 Paired samples statistics for traditional teaching

Means

Std.

Std.

Deviation

Error
Mean

Total pre-test

72.3600

25

6.17036

1.23407

79.6400

25

8.31104

1.66221

score in
Total post-test
score

Table 4.4 Paired samples statistics for inquiry teaching

Means

Std.

Std.

Deviation

Error
Mean

Total pre-test

72.7419

31

7.67666

1.37877

87.4839

31

9.12459

1.63882

score in
Total post-test
score

19

4.4 T-test analysis

An independent t-test in used to compare the post-test score of the two groups.

Table 4.5 Independent- sample statistics

Means

SD

t-test

df

Sig (2tailed)

Traditional

79.2308

8.40622

26

Inquiry

87.4839

9.12459

31

-3. 525

55

.001

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare total post-test score between

traditional teaching group and inquiry instruction group. There is a significant difference in the
scores for traditional (M=79.2308, SD=8.40622) and inquiry (M=87.4839, SD=9.12459)
conditions; t (55) = -3.525, p = 0.001. These results suggest that there is a difference in students
motivation using the traditional science instruction and inquiry-based instruction. The null
hypothesis is rejected. This shows that inquiry instruction has an effect on students motivation
level. Specifically, our results suggest that inquiry instruction has positive effect on students
motivation than traditional teaching.

20

CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction
In this section, the findings of the study are correlated with each of the three research questions
presented in chapter one. After a brief review of the questions as far as possible outcomes, results
are discussed, including interpretations to provide logical explanations. The findings also related
to the trends and developments outlined in the literature review in the first chapter.

5.2 Discussion
Based on the above findings, it indicates that inquiry instruction enhance students motivation
than traditional science instruction. These findings confirm with previous studies (Gibson &
Chase, 2002; Shimoda et al., 2002; Welch et al., 1981) that inquiry activities can increase
students affective domain of learning. Inquiry instruction can also help students appreciate
better about the nature of science learning, reduce students addressing on comparing with other
peers and get attention from the teacher, they will shift their goal to address their own learning
(Tuan et al, 2005).

Table 4.5 shows that there is a significant difference in students motivation using the
traditional science teaching and inquiry-based instruction. The results indicate that students
involved in inquiry instruction have higher motivational level than the students involved in
traditional teaching. This implies that inquiry based approach is more effective in enhancing
students motivation than traditional instruction.

21

5.3 Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of inquiry based instruction towards
students motivation. Results show that inquiry instruction can increase significantly with
students motivation toward science learning than traditional science teaching. The inquiry
instruction seems to provide students more challenging and meaningful tasks to engage in, and
all students motivation has been increased. This study suggests that inquiry instruction can
promote all students in their motivation toward science learning.

22

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