An Investigation into Factors of Turkish Secondary School Students’ Learning Engagement in Science Courses

Abstract

This study examines secondary school students' learning engagement in science course concerning gender, grades, parents' educational level, tutor support, experimentation and study frequency. The research method was a cross-sectional survey. The research was conducted among 820 secondary school students from seven public schools in the southern region of Turkey during the 2019-2020 academic year. The data collection tool was the Turkish version of the Students' Adaptive Learning Engagement in Science (SALES) Scale. Independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA were used for data analysis. Consequently, female students were found to be more engaged in science courses than male, students who conducted experiments were more engaged than those who did not, and those who studied more frequently were significantly more engaged in science courses. Furthermore, a noteworthy discrepancy was identified in the Learning Goal Orientation scale among the grade levels. However, it has been determined that whether students receive tutor support or their parents' education levels have no statistical effect on their engagement in science courses.

Keywords

• Learning engagement
• motivation
• science course
• secondary school
• self-regulation

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