Multilevel investigations of student motivation, engagement, and achievement in science in relation to teacher related variables


Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Matematik ve Fen Bilimleri Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2016

Öğrenci: DEKANT KIRAN

Danışman: SEMRA SUNGUR

Özet:

The main purpose of this study was to examine the interrelationships among teacher motivation, job satisfaction, and 7th grade students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement in science. Additionally, relationships among school environment variables, teacher motivation, and job satisfaction were also investigated. The participants of the study were 134 science teachers and their 3394 students in Ankara. A set of Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses were used to analyze the student and teacher data and a path analysis was used to investigate the interrelationships among only teacher level variables. Student level variables included students’ self-efficacy, achievement goals (mastery approach-avoidance, performance approach-avoidance), and engagement (agentic, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional). Teacher level variables included school environment variables which were school context (relations with parents, relations with colleagues, supervisory support, and discipline problems) and school goal structure (school mastery and performance goals) and teacher motivation variables (efficacy for student engagement, efficacy for instructional strategies, and efficacy for classroom management; collective efficacy for group competence and task analysis; mastery and performance goals for instruction), and job satisfaction. It was hypothesized that teacher motivation variables and job satisfaction influenced student outcomes; teacher motivation variables interacted with student level variables; student-level variables influenced students’ science achievement; and school environment variables associated with teacher motivation variables. Results indicated that science teachers’ mastery approaches to instruction was the only significant predictor of students’ science achievement. In the student level, behavioral engagement, self-efficacy and mastery approach goals were the significant predictors of students’ science achievement. Moreover, path analysis results indicated that school mastery goal structure significantly associated with science teachers’ mastery instructional goals and relations with parents and student discipline problems were the best predictors of science teachers’ motivation.