Early Adolescents' Motivation During Science

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Early Adolescents’ Motivation During Science Investigation HELEN PATRICK CAROLINE YOON Purdue University

National Research Council, 1996, 2000). They also believe that students’ engagement rekindles their inherent curiosity about the natural world around them, thus increasing their motivation to learn and understand. That motivation is believed to be necessary for provoking a lifelong interest in science learning and for supporting more students who opt to study science in high school and beyond (National Research Council, 2000). It also is vital in the more immediate term for sustaining students’ willingness to engage in the difficult cognitive work associated with developing conceptual understanding (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). Thus, reform recommendations rest heavily on assumptions that changes to curricula and to instructional practices will increase student motivation in science, which will lead to greater understanding for all students and to more of them electing to study science past the middle grades. Despite the assumption in science reform that motivation plays a pivotal role in inquiry, there is a paucity of research that has addressed it; research on students conducting investigations seems to have focused almost exclusively on cognitive factors. However, motivation research in traditional classes and across a range of subjects has recognized that different achievement-related beliefs are related to differences in the quality of students’ cognitive engagement, which in turn, are related to differential achievement (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). Furthermore, researchers have argued that motivational beliefs may mediate cognition and conceptual change (Pintrich, Marx, & Boyle, 1993). Accordingly, there is a need for research on science inquiry to address motivational beliefs and the ways in which they relate to thoughtfulness and conceptual understanding. That was the objective of the current study.

ABSTRACT The authors observed a group of 4 eighthgrade students who conducted a series of inquiry-based science investigations over 6 weeks. The authors examined evidence of students’ motivational beliefs, thoughtfulness, nature of their conceptual understanding, and changes in that understanding. The authors also used pre- and posttests of conceptual understanding. Marked variability in terms of the types of students’ motivations was found. The variations were associated with differences in the quality of their thoughtfulness and in the development of their conceptual understanding. Evidence of student mastery-goal orientation appeared most strongly related to increased understanding. Key words: eighth-grade students; motivational beliefs, thoughtfulness, conceptual understanding; science investigation

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cience is fundamentally about inquiry—the process of posing questions about the world in which we live and then investigating and evaluating possible answers to those questions. In contrast, education has traditionally emphasized science as factual information to be learned, largely through memorization. Consequently, students typically view science as difficult, boring, and irrelevant to everyday life (Lunetta, 1998). Furthermore, students tend not to apply what they learn to life outside the classroom, and their naive misconceptions about phenomena in the natural world tend to remain unchanged (Roth, 1990). Reforms in science education have sought to address those problems. Inquiry is now advocated as an integral part of students’ science learning rather than as just in the purview of the scientist. Recent National Science Education standards state that “inquiry into authentic questions generated from student experiences is the central strategy for teaching science” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 31) and “inquiry is a critical component of a science program at all grade levels and in every domain of science” (p. 214). Educators generally believe that students’ active engagement in inquiry promotes accurate understandings of scientific principles and concepts (Lunetta, 1998;

Address correspondence to Helen Patrick, Department of Educational Studies, 100 North University Street, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098. (Email: [email protected]) 319

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Investigations Conducting investigations is a central aspect of inquiry. Investigations are seen as an invaluable means to teach science content, promote conceptual understanding, and prompt the revision of misconceptions (Linn, 1997; Lunetta, 1998; Tobin, 1990). Researchers also have given attention to the capacity of investigations to arouse and sustain student motivation (Blumenfeld, Marx, Patrick, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997). They have noted that it is crucial that investigations address issues that students find intrinsically interesting, relevant, or meaningful (Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997). Researchers also have emphasized the necessity of student interaction, which is viewed as a significant catalyst for learning and understanding (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994). For students to gain the most substance from investigations, they need to discuss expectations, observations, conclusions, theories, and explanations before, during, and after conducting the activity. Investigation is seen as a recursive process, rather than a constrained procedure. Lunetta (1998) identified four general types of activities within investigations: (a) plan— students articulate questions and hypotheses and determine procedures; (b) perform the investigation; (c) analyze and interpret—students “explain relationships, develop generalisations [sic], examine the accuracy of data, outline assumptions and limitations, and formulate new questions” (p. 255); and (d) apply—students consider how the findings relate to new questions. Despite the significant revisions to science education, students who conduct inquiry-based investigations do not always make the intended gains in conceptual understanding (e.g., Schauble, Glaser, Raghavan, & Reiner, 1991; Shepardson & Moje, 1999). For example, Shepardson and Moje (1999) found that students who built and tested circuits sometimes did not appear perturbed by results that conflicted with their expectations but instead explained the unexpected results in ways that allowed their inaccurate theories to remain intact. Variability in students’ development of understanding, however, may be related to differences in their motivation. Motivation Inquiry-based science programs assume that students will be motivated to learn about science when they are actively involved in investigations that address issues or questions that relate meaningfully to their lives and when they interact with others in small groups (Blumenfeld et al., 1997). It is also assumed that this motivation will lead to increased behavioral and cognitive engagement, and, ultimately, to conceptual understanding. Views of motivation invoked by much of the writing about science inquiry generally reflect an intuitive, undifferentiated view of motivation as level or amount. In contrast, current motivational theories focus more on different types of achievement-

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related beliefs. Although most motivational research, including that in science classes, has involved traditional instruction, these theories are relevant also to inquiry-based science (e.g., Lee & Anderson, 1993; Lee & Brophy, 1996). Motivational theories are used to conceptualize and explain motivated behavior—occasions when students are persistent, expend effort, confront challenges or difficulties, continue thinking about questions or issues outside the time allotted, and show positive affect such as enthusiasm and excitement. Current theories focus on individuals’ appraisals of themselves and their situations. Thus, the theories involve addressing questions such as, “Can I succeed at this task?” “Do I want to succeed and why?” and “What will count as success?” (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). The different beliefs and perceptions that students hold, associated with those questions, are seen as contributing to different kinds of learning-related behaviors and affect. Students’ beliefs about their current competence and their confidence regarding future success, or self-efficacy, are associated with ways in which they engage in their schoolwork. Self-perceptions of competence and self-efficacy are related positively to indicators of motivation (e.g., effort, persistence, choosing challenging tasks), use of deep cognitive and self-regulatory learning strategies, and achievement; they are related negatively to anxiety (Bandura, 1993; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). Thus, the belief that one is competent or will be successful is related to optimal patterns of engagement and learning. The different purposes that students have for engaging in academics also affect the quality of their involvement. Goalorientation theory addresses the different reasons (Ames, 1992). Students may want to develop competence, gain understanding or insight, and improve relative to their past performance (i.e., mastery-goal orientation). In addition, students may be concerned with how they are perceived by others and with their performance relative to others (i.e., performance-goal orientation). A performance orientation may involve students who want to demonstrate competence, appear smart, and do better than their peers (performanceapproach) or involve students’ concern that they do not show a lack of ability or perform worse than their peers (performance-avoidance; Middleton & Midgley, 1997). Different goal orientations are associated with qualitatively different patterns of academic engagement. Engaging in academics so that one can understand the material is associated positively with expending effort, using effective deep-learning strategies, and achievement (Meece, Blumenfeld, & Hoyle, 1988; Nolen & Haladyna, 1990). A performance-avoidance orientation is associated with maladaptive engagement, including (a) disorganized approach to studying, (b) use of more surface- and less deep-processing strategies, (c) lack of persistence, (d) avoidance of help seeking, (e) anxiety, and (f) lower examination performance (Elliot, McGregor, & Gable, 1999; Middleton & Midgley, 1997). The implications for holding a performanceapproach orientation are less clear; there are associations

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with adaptive and maladaptive learning-related processes. A performance-approach orientation has been associated positively with effort, persistence, and examination performance (Elliot et al., 1999). However, that orientation also has been associated with a disorganized approach to studying, superficial processing strategies, anxiety, and avoiding seeking help (Elliot et al.; Middleton & Midgley). Middle graders who reported high mastery and high performanceapproach orientations for science used superficial learning strategies significantly more and had significantly lower effort, grades, and test scores than did students with highmastery and low performance-approach orientations (Meece & Holt, 1993). To summarize, motivational research has shown convincingly that various types of beliefs are related differently to achievement and cognitive engagement. This research has largely involved self-report surveys and taken a quantitative approach. Thus, the analyses typically identified independent effects of different motivational beliefs. We wanted to focus more holistically on combinations of students’ beliefs and on the nature of their conceptual understanding and changes in that understanding. We also wanted to examine in detail what students actually said and did during investigations and to describe how qualitative differences in patterns of students’ motivation were related to evidence of thoughtfulness and understanding. Therefore, we took a qualitative descriptive approach, as suggested by Pintrich et al. (1993). We used multiple observations of middle grade students who conducted a series of investigations over a 6week period, in addition to pre- and posttests of conceptual understanding. We focused on a group of highly motivated students because we wanted to examine associations with the quality, not level, of motivation. Method Participants We focused on a group of 4 eighth-grade students: Raymond1 (a European American boy), Marius (a boy from Bulgaria), Danetta (a Hispanic American girl), and Praneeta (a girl from Yemen). The students worked together for the duration of the curriculum; they appeared interested in the project, participated consistently, and were rarely off task. In short, their behavior seemed to indicate that they were very motivated, as individuals and as a group, in science class. Classroom Context and Curriculum The participants were students in a class of 27 eighth graders within a K–8 school in a Chicago neighborhood. The class was ethnically diverse (e.g., from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central America), and many students spoke a language other than English at home. Science was scheduled every day for a period of 41 min. The entire class

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appeared generally attentive and interested in the curriculum; they seemed to grapple with understanding the science content. The science teacher was European American and in her 29th year as a teacher. She was experienced in that she had used inquiry-based or hands-on science methods for 20 years and was very skilled. During the previous year, when she taught science to the same students as seventh graders, they followed two inquiry curricula and were familiar with the process. The Global Warming project,2 which affords standardsbased, technology-rich inquiry into global climate phenomena, was developed for use by seventh and eighth graders (Edelson, Gordin, & Pea, 1999). The project is centered around the question, “Why do scientists think people are making the earth’s climate warmer?” In addition to enabling students to learn about the general process of carrying out science inquiry, the project includes specific earth science content (e.g., factors affecting the earth’s temperature, energy balance, and greenhouse effect). We focused on the three investigations that are part of the unit about factors that contribute to the earth’s temperature. The penlight lab allowed students to investigate the role of the earth’s curvature by illustrating how the intensity of the sun’s light varies according to the angle at which it hits earth’s surface. Students attached a flashlight to a stand so that the angle at which the light shone onto the table could be adjusted between 90–40 degrees. With the penlight positioned at different angles, students traced the light circles onto grid paper. They calculated the area of each light circle, then calculated the change in light intensity associated with each angle. The light shining perpendicular to the table represented the sun’s rays at the equator, whereas light shining at 40 degrees represented the rays nearer the polar regions. Students could extrapolate from the results that the sun’s rays shine onto a larger surface area at latitudes further from the equator; consequently, the energy input there is less intense, making the climate cooler. In the reflectivity lab, students investigated how different colored surfaces absorb and reflect different amounts of energy. That process involved placing different colored envelopes under a heat lamp, then recording the temperature that they reached. Students could see that darker colors tended to absorb more heat and thus grow warmer than lighter colors that reflected more heat. The greenhouse gas lab provided a framework for understanding the greenhouse effect. Students captured plain air in one test tube and carbon dioxide in a second and then compared the rate at which the gases in each test tube heated up when held close to a lamp. Students could identify that carbon dioxide absorbed and retained heat more than did plain air and extrapolate to understand the consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Measures and Procedure Classroom observations. We videotaped classrooms approximately three times per week over the course of the

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curriculum (about 6 months). Videographers focused on the teacher’s presentation of lessons, students’ engagement in investigations, and whole-class and small-group discussions. During group work, we selected one of three groups to videotape. We ensured that the three groups were recorded for a comparable amount of time throughout the project. In this study, we report on observations for one group as they undertook three investigations; this involved almost 11 hr of videotape over 6 weeks. Across the videotaped lessons, approximately one third of the time involved group work and two thirds involved whole-class discussions. Conceptual understanding. Students completed a pretest before beginning the curriculum and a posttest of comparable items at the end of the unit. The tests focused on understanding concepts related to global warming and general application of the scientific method to real-life questions. There were multiple-choice and short-answer questions that emphasized conceptual understanding rather than factual recall; tests were scored out of 19 points. Data Analysis We created a detailed summary of each videotape, including transcriptions of content-related conversations and descriptions of teacher and student behavior. From those notes, we identified all recorded behavior and talk for each of the 4 students and teacher or peer talk directed at that student. We copied all data for each student onto a separate chart. Next we identified individually all instances in the data that indicated students’ self-compe-

tence perceptions, goal orientations, thoughtfulness, and understanding (or misunderstanding) of science concepts. We also identified behavioral indicators of motivation, including involvement, interest, effort, persistence, and affect. To create descriptions of each student, we iteratively generated hypotheses and searched for confirming and disconfirming evidence. We alternated between independent examination of the transcripts and charts and joint discussion, and continued until we could identify no new patterns and felt certain that our results represented the data accurately. Results For each student, we identified patterns of his or her apparent motivation, thoughtfulness, and understanding across the 6 weeks of investigations by examining the charts and lesson transcripts. Even though the students exhibited high levels of motivation and engagement, they differed from each other qualitatively (i.e., types of motivation and nature of thinking). After identifying the students’ patterns, we examined their pretest and posttest scores on the science test. The average pretest score for the 22 students who took the test was 9.55 (SD = 3.03); the average posttest score was 12.68 (SD = 3.66). A paired t test indicated that this was a significant average increase, t = 5.69, p < .001. The class means, in addition to the scores for the 4 student participants, are shown in Figure 1. Next we present descriptions of the patterns of each stu-

Conceptual Understanding

18.0 16.0 14.0 Class Mean Raymond

12.0

Praneeta Marius Danetta

10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0 Pretest

Posttest

FIGURE 1. Students’ pretest and posttest scores of conceptual understanding.

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dent’s evident motivation (i.e., perceived competence, goal orientations), behavioral and cognitive engagement, and understanding. We also show their pretest and posttest achievement scores (i.e., evidence of learning) and link their learning to the different types of motivation. Raymond Raymond was characteristically involved, intense, and persistent throughout all phases of the investigations. He was the most central person in his group and had a dominant presence in the class. In small-group activities, he tended to take charge of setting up the investigations and carrying out the principal tasks (e.g., releasing the CO2 from the Alka Seltzer, attaching the flashlight to the stand). The teacher and other students acknowledged that Raymond was especially clever. For example, after giving a long and articulate explanation (in this instance incorrect) of a hypothesis coupled with two diagrams drawn on the chalkboard, the class clapped spontaneously. Raymond also appeared to perceive himself as highly able at science and participated confidently in all activities. He often sounded convincing even when he was not correct. During wholeclass and small-group discussions, he critiqued other students’ suggestions and quickly pointed out their incorrect responses. He did not appear bothered by often being the sole dissenting voice but argued his claims persistently despite disagreement from others. For example, when each group had calculated the areas of the light circles (penlight lab) and was ready to learn how to calculate light intensity for each, Raymond reported that the teacher’s method of calculation was wrong. When she and other students did not agree, he used both their and his methods to calculate the area of the same circle and reported that they gave different answers. When the teacher still did not acknowledge that his was the correct method, he asked to draw the example on the board and explain. He was correct, and the other groups had to recalculate areas of their circles. Throughout this and other arguments he was not disrespectful, just confident and tenacious. It seemed very important to Raymond that he could demonstrate to others how much he knew. Thus, his involvement seemed to reflect a strong performanceapproach orientation in addition to his high selfcompetence perceptions. He seemed to particularly enjoy discussions, but it appeared important to him that he could speak often and be an authority. In small-group tasks, he answered other students’ questions, sometimes interrupting someone else who had begun to answer. His answers often gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his science knowledge, such as when he told Praneeta that infrared “is a type of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum, before visible light.” On another occasion, after Raymond had been giving his explanation, Marius asked, “Is it my turn now?” Raymond replied, “Wait, hold on. It’s not turns, dude. I’m just explaining. OK?” Thus, it seemed that he was more inter-

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ested in telling the others what he thought and less interested in hearing what they had to say. Generally, Raymond did not appear focused on performance-avoidance goals or on not appearing smart. However, when his position as the class authority seemed to be threatened, he did seem concerned that he was not perceived as wrong. In those situations, some of his responses involved restating his arguments while ignoring contradictory evidence. Another type of response that Raymond made was to indicate the inadequacies of the investigation. For example, after the penlight lab, he spent considerable effort over 3 days arguing that variations in the earth’s temperature were caused by the distance from the sun rather than by the angle at which the rays hit the surface. During whole-class discussions about distance versus angle, though, it slowly became apparent that the evidence was supporting the angle argument. Raymond then conceded somewhat by saying, “I think it’s distance and the tilt.” However, he also criticized the lab and argued that “The earth is not flat like paper and the sun is not like a flashlight.” He repeated this criticism at other times over the following weeks and complained that the lab “set a bad example.” It was difficult to tell to what extent Raymond engaged in the science with the purpose of understanding the content. Whatever mastery orientation he had, however, seemed to be clearly overshadowed by his focus on demonstrating his competence. Raymond often showed evidence of being thoughtful. He interpreted the results of investigations quickly and accurately and related them to the hypotheses. However, his strong performance focus, including an apparent reluctance to concede that he was wrong, seemed to interfere with his revising his initial thoughts (at least publicly). For example, after having given a lengthy reasoning for his suggestions that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas but sulfur dioxide is not, the teacher pointed out a fundamental contradiction in his logic. Despite her clear explanation of the contradiction, Raymond restated his same arguments while disregarding her comments. The following day a visiting graduate student talked about sulfur dioxide being a greenhouse gas; Raymond was uncharacteristically quiet and made no comment or gave no overt acceptance that he needed to change his reasoning. Raymond did show evidence of conceptual learning. His pretest score was 13.5—the highest in the class. He was the only student to score 19.0 (the maximum) on the posttest. To summarize, Raymond appeared very confident of his ability and was highly performance oriented. Most often he exhibited a performance-approach tendency, but when faced with evidence that he could be wrong, his efforts changed to saving face. The extent of his mastery orientation was unclear. Although Raymond appeared characteristically highly thoughtful, his apparent concern with how he was viewed by others seemed to hinder him from overtly revising his thoughts and explanations. However, his understanding increased and he earned a perfect test score at the end of the curriculum.

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Marius Marius was gregarious and participated enthusiastically in all phases of the investigations. He was involved in setting up equipment, appeared interested in the results, and was very vocal during whole-class and small-group discussions. Marius seemed to be very confident in his ability; he typically was one of the first students to answer questions, and during small-group discussions, he often interrupted others to agree or disagree with them. He also challenged Raymond’s arguments confidently and often. For example, during discussions about implications of the penlight lab, Marius maintained his view for three lessons that variations in the earth’s temperature are caused by the angle of the sun’s rays, despite Raymond making a different argument. The overriding impression from observing Marius was that he was very concerned that other people perceived him as smart. A number of times he quickly expressed agreement with Raymond or other able students and claimed that he had been about to say the same thing. Other times Marius attempted to debunk Raymond’s ideas or to identify material that Raymond did not know. For example, when Raymond did not answer Marius’s question instantly about what carbon dioxide is like, Marius said triumphantly, “You never thought about that, did you?” There was little indication that Marius was concerned with understanding the material. Although he did out-ofclass Internet research on the greenhouse effect, it seemed that his motive was more to boost appearances than his understanding. He brought four pages of text and diagrams to class that he had printed; however, he did not get the recognition he seemed to expect because he had not read it and was not able to share new information. The teacher was unimpressed; she said, “[Research] helps us together as a class, but only if you get your research done, and you read it, and you think about it, and you bring it for discussion.” Marius seemed to be more interested in visibility—saying a lot and being first, than he was about the quality of what he said or his understanding. Thus, he was often first to express his ideas, but when pressed to explain, he usually responded, “I don’t know,” and then stopped. During a group discussion on what students had learned about global warming, he seemed unconcerned about understanding, and his contributions were rather superficial. For example, he mentioned the sun’s rays, to which Raymond asked, “What about the sun’s rays?” Marius responded, “Some get reflected, some get absorbed. All that stuff.” He seemed more concerned about accruing answers, and said to Praneeta a number of times, “I have to copy off you.” At times, however, Marius appeared to think more deeply about the investigations and related concepts and understand the science, although this understanding often did not appear stable. Some days Marius made complex and correct comments, but then made much more superficial and relatively thoughtless statements a few days later. For example, one day Marius showed his understanding of the green-

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house effect when he suggested (with teacher scaffolding) that deforestation leads to fewer trees that remove carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis, with the result that carbon dioxide levels increase and cause an energy imbalance. However, the following day he seemed to have an inaccurate view of the greenhouse effect and confused the layer of greenhouse gases with the hole in the ozone layer. When the group debated why deserts are so hot despite high reflectivity, Marius suggested, “There is no greenhouse effect [over them]. If there’s no greenhouse effect, then it’s more direct sunlight. It just comes through, and it’s hotter because—I don’t know.” We observed Marius revising his thoughts about the cause of differences in global temperature. However, despite the potential for understanding that his early comments showed, we determined no evidence of understanding by the end of the unit. At the time that his group set up the penlight lab, Marius seemed to recognize the importance of the sun’s angle; without prompting he asked the teacher, “What about the earth’s tilting? That could affect the angle of the sun’s rays.” Two days later, during a class discussion of why the equator is the hottest part of the earth, Marius continued with his argument that angle affects temperature. He explained, “When the sun is direct it goes straight to the equator so the intensity is very strong, but when it’s on a diagonal it’s not as strong so it’s not as hot [as] on the equator.” However, because he was thinking about angle in terms of the direction the rays travel from the sun to the earth, not the relative angle that they hit a portion of the earth’s surface, a challenge to his model (involving the size that he had drawn the sun relative to the earth) later in the discussion left him confused. He then concluded that his argument was wrong and that angle was not responsible for temperature variations. About the same time, Raymond argued that the penlight lab was not an accurate model of the principle. Marius also then dismissed the lab’s validity, saying that it did not represent the sun and earth correctly. Arguably, if Marius had been more concerned about understanding the content, he may have persisted in thinking more about the relation between angle and temperature as in his initial thoughts, rather than giving up. Three weeks later, during the review, Marius stated that the class had not determined whether differences in global temperature were caused by angle or distance. Later he offered, “We learned about intensity.” When Raymond asked, “What does that have to do with it?” Marius replied, “I don’t know.” Marius’s pretest score of 9.5 was equal to the class mean. However, his posttest score was also 9.5, indicating that his understanding of global warming did not change appreciably. He was 1 of only 3 students in the class whose posttest score was not higher than the pretest. To summarize, it appeared that Marius was confident of his ability and exhibited a strong performance-approach goal orientation. There also was evidence of a very low mastery-goal orientation. Those beliefs seemed associated

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with many superficial comments and no increase in conceptual understanding. Danetta Danetta was characteristically attentive, exhibited interest, and participated in all phases of the investigations, although she appeared reserved. However, she tended to be ignored during the data collection part of lab activities when the boys dominated the materials and Praneeta monitored their actions. For example, Danetta made suggestions when the boys were having difficulty attaching the flashlight to the board during the penlight lab, but they did not respond, and she did not repeat her idea. She appeared comfortable observing, and rather than appearing upset, she did not react as if she were excluded from the group. Danetta spoke much less often than her group members did, and her voice was quiet and without the emotion that the others showed. Sometimes she posed questions quietly to Praneeta, who repeated them more loudly to the group. She was always involved in small-group discussions, but did not speak out in whole-class deliberations. Although Danetta said less than her group members did, she appeared to have moderately high perceptions of competence. She appeared thoughtful before talking, expressed her ideas with confidence, and did not seem hesitant about disagreeing with others. For example, in response to Marius’s suggestion that no greenhouse effect existed over the desert and his question, “Anyone got a problem with that?” Danetta replied, “Me. There kind of has to be a greenhouse effect. I mean, there is one all around the whole earth, so why not the desert?” We saw no evidence that Danetta had performanceapproach or performance-avoidance orientations. Rather, she seemed uneasy when she received recognition for her competence and more comfortable when she did not attract attention. For example, when the group voted her visualization of global temperatures the best (the best representation was to be entered into the Worldwatcher program for comparisons with archival data), Danetta appeared embarrassed and claimed that Marius’s answer was better. The other group members spent a while trying to convince her that her visualization was the best before they used her work. Her actions seemed to reflect unease with recognition and a focus on her, rather than with low confidence in herself. Although Danetta seemed mostly calm and quiet, there were indications that understanding the content was important to her. For example, if group members’ talk moved off topic or started to become more personal, she made comments to bring them back to discussing the content. During an occasion when the teacher mediated a disagreement between Raymond and Praneeta, Danetta tried to interrupt a number of times to talk about the content that they had been debating. Evidence of her mastery orientation also came from the extensive self-initiated research on global warming and greenhouse gases that she did outside of class.

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Danetta responded thoughtfully to group members’ comments and gave reasons when she disagreed with them. Related to her evident mastery orientation, she had wonderment questions that she asked the teacher when she could not find the answers herself. In one example, the group had been discussing, with the teacher present, that sulfur dioxide contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer. Danetta asked whether sulfur dioxide is also a greenhouse gas. Despite Raymond quickly telling her, “No it isn’t,” Danetta elaborated on her thinking: “With the greenhouse gases— nitrous oxide, methane, carbon dioxide, they all make up greenhouse gases. . . . But then there’s a small percentage of other atmospheric trace gases that makes up our atmospheric greenhouse gas, and I want to know if it’s [i.e., SO2] one of those.” The teacher smiled and suggested that Danetta thought that sulfur dioxide is a greenhouse gas; Danetta agreed and replied, “Nothing will tell me.” Danetta’s pretest score was 9.0, just below the class mean. Her posttest score was 18.5, indicating a marked increase in understanding. As indicated by Figure 1, she appeared to make greater gains in understanding than did the class on average and than her group members did. To summarize, Danetta appeared confident of her ability, although she was shy with respect to getting attention; she was strongly mastery oriented, and had low performance orientations. Despite her being the quietest person in the group, her statements were thoughtful and indicated a desire for meaningful understanding. Her apparent pattern of optimal motivational beliefs was associated with the greatest gains in conceptual understanding of the group and within the class. Praneeta Praneeta appeared involved in all phases of the investigations, although she was not as dominant as either Raymond or Marius. During lab investigations, she tended to watch carefully and help out when asked. Her contributions predominantly involved clarifying procedural aspects, such as whether the set-up was correct, and monitoring what the students were doing. Praneeta was accurate in these procedures; during the greenhouse gas lab, another group asked her to check that they were conducting the experiment correctly. When the teacher checked on her group’s progress, it was almost always Praneeta who reported on what they were doing or debating. During group discussions, she tended to take notes for the group and kept them on task. In general, Praneeta exhibited a moderate level of confidence in her ability in science class. She volunteered answers often during whole-class discussions and was always correct. However, most answers were to recall-type questions, such as naming a factor responsible for heating the earth, and she sometimes looked back in her notes before speaking. During small-group discussions, she answered other students’ questions, although sometimes somewhat cautiously. For example, after Marius had asked

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what carbon dioxide smells like, she said, “I don’t think it has any color . . . I don’t think it smells. It’s odorless.” Despite her accuracy in discussions and carrying out investigations, Praneeta appeared to be intimidated frequently by Raymond and his intense and direct challenges to her contributions. His responses seemed sometimes to undermine her confidence, and we observed evidence of a performance-avoidance orientation. At times, Praneeta responded to Raymond by putting her head on her desk, looking embarrassed and deflated, and becoming quiet. At other times, though, she reacted assertively. For example, when Raymond claimed that there are no plants in the desert, she disagreed and asked him how desert animals stay alive. Praneeta also expressed her concern with not wanting to be perceived as unable to provide correct answers. During discussions on 2 days, she confronted Raymond about the condescending looks that she perceived from him. After he said something he looked at Praneeta, who responded, “Yeah, I get it. Why do you do that? You always look at me and go (in a sarcastic tone) ‘No, you didn’t get it.’You must think I’m dumb or something.” Praneeta appeared to want to understand the content. Despite being upset when she thought Raymond saw her as dumb, she nevertheless asked her group questions on subsequent days, such as what are infrared rays, or, “This might seem like a stupid question but what is CO2?” Another day, though, she waited until after class to ask the teacher about two models of the sun warming the earth. When the teacher asked her group what they liked about the global warming curriculum, Praneeta mentioned a journal entry and said it helped her understand the concept. Thus, she expressed that understanding the science was important to her. Although Praneeta appeared consistently effortful and conscientious and expressed wanting to understand the concepts, the quality of her thinking appeared to vary markedly. On some occasions her answers indicated thoughtfulness and efforts to integrate new concepts with old learning. For example, during a whole-class discussion about greenhouse gases, the teacher said, “So let’s think about this water vapor for a moment. Everyone seemed to think that it’s okay, it’s a greenhouse gas. Where does this water vapor come from?” None of the curriculum lessons thus far had addressed this content, and so students could not rely on recall. Only a few students raised their hands to answer, including Praneeta, who suggested that it might relate to previous learning about the water cycle. Other times, however, Praneeta made comments that indicated ineffective reasoning, such as when she challenged Raymond’s distance argument in the penlight lab by exclaiming, “The sun isn’t like that, it rotates a little.” Comments such as these were all made by Praneeta during small-group discussions and seemed to be associated with her feeling threatened by Raymond. Although we saw many instances of her (higher and lower quality) reasoning throughout the investigations, when the group reviewed what they had learned about

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global warming, we observed Praneeta’s focus change from understanding concepts to facts and answers authorized by the teacher. One example was when Danetta asked what they had decided caused differences in global temperature: “Did we decide on angle or distance, or was it both?” Praneeta responded, “I remember [the teacher] said angle and not distance. Not so much distance.” Raymond then challenged with, “But then why is Pluto so much colder?” to which she answered, “I don’t know. You should ask her that, because that’s what she said.” Praneeta’s contributions to the group’s notes involved giving facts, such as, “The earth’s tipped at an angle of 23.5 degrees” and “The ozone layer blocks harmful UV rays.” When Marius asked her what the latter comment had to do with global warming, she replied, “A lot;” this answer was superficial and gave no indication of conceptual understanding. Praneeta’s pretest score of 12.5 was above the class mean, and her posttest score was 15.5. Thus, her score at the beginning of the curriculum was almost at the class pretest mean. However, the slope of her learning was not as high as that of Raymond or Danetta. In summary, it appeared that Praneeta was interested in learning about concepts related to global warming and typically engaged thoughtfully with the content. However, her engagement, both behavioral and cognitive, seemed to have been affected negatively at times by her concern of being perceived by Raymond as dumb. Furthermore, she seemed to revert to a traditional view of science as learning facts when students reviewed what they had learned during the unit, rather than pulling together evidence that they had gathered and models that they had generated and evaluated. Discussion We examined qualitative differences in patterns of motivational beliefs among students during science inquiry and investigated associations of those patterns with their thoughtfulness and conceptual understanding. All 4 students appeared consistently highly motivated (e.g., enthusiastic, interested, involved) during the 6 weeks of investigations. However, with a closer examination of the nature of their motivation, we identified marked variability in terms of their motivational beliefs. Those variations were associated with differences in the quality of their thoughtfulness and development of conceptual understanding. Thus, the results suggest that various motivational beliefs associated with inquiry-based investigations are related differentially to changes in students’ understanding. Increased conceptual understanding was related to mastery orientation. The only student who showed evidence of not being mastery oriented was also the only one of the group whose test score did not increase. That finding is consistent with the substantial accumulation of research indicating the vital role of mastery goals for learning in general (Ames, 1992) and in science specifically (e.g., Meece et al., 1988; Nolen & Haladyna, 1990). Furthermore, the results

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suggest that a high performance orientation may interfere with understanding and conceptual revision. Because a performance orientation involves a focus on the self, rather than on the task (Nicholls, 1989), a concern with how one is perceived by others may detract one’s attention away from understanding the content. In addition, a concern with creating positive impressions or preserving one’s reputation may decrease the likelihood that a student will revise his or her thoughts and support a different argument, at least publicly. The only student who did not show evidence of a performance orientation increased her understanding dramatically more than did any of her group members and the class on average. The findings also suggest that different combinations of mastery- and performance-goal orientations have different implications for their conceptual learning. The pattern of high-mastery and low-performance goals was associated with a sizably greater increase in understanding compared with the high mastery/performance-avoidance pattern. The results add to Meece and Holt’s (1993) similar finding with performance-approach goals and students’ achievement test scores and grades. Furthermore, the descriptions of students’ behavior and interactions regarding their motivation and conceptual understanding within the present study illustrate why and how these processes may occur. To examine students’ behaviors and interactions during inquiry investigations in detail and to observe changes in their conceptual understanding, we needed to focus closely on a small number of students. The limitation with that approach is that one cannot generalize from those few students directly to all middle-grade students who conduct investigations. However, the findings are consistent with other motivational research that addresses the use of adaptive learning strategies (e.g., Meece et al., 1988; Nolen & Haladyna, 1990; Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992) and with theoretically based arguments about the centrality of motivation for conceptual change (Pintrich et al., 1993). Further research is needed, however. Although an examination of gender was beyond the scope of this study, there were salient factors related to gender. Consistent with findings in other studies, the boys appeared to be more strongly performance-approach oriented and more dominant in small-group activities than the girls. This study raises questions about the extent to which boys’ typical greater competitiveness and dominance are likely to contribute to girls’ discomfort in small-group inquiry activities, and, thus, potentially detract from girls’ learning (see Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000). Our study also underscores suggestions for further research regarding factors associated with gender in the context of small-group inquiry activities (Blumenfeld et al., 1997). The results of this study indicate that teachers need to be concerned with more than the level of their students’ motivation; exhibiting high motivation and behavioral engagement will not necessarily lead to greater conceptual understanding. The type of motivational beliefs that students hold, particu-

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larly beliefs about their competence and their reasons for engaging in the tasks, appears vital. Motivation researchers (e.g., Ames, 1992) have advocated for some time that teachers strive to foster students’ high mastery orientation and decrease emphasis on performance goals, particularly concerns about not wanting to appear lacking in knowledge or ability. This study indicates that such an emphasis will likely benefit students’ understanding of science concepts. NOTES We thank the Spencer Foundation for funding this research. We are most grateful to the teacher and students who participated in this study, and thank the staff at LetUS for their contributions. We also thank Lynley Anderman, Graham P. Collins, and the reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. 1. All names are pseudonyms. 2. Details of the Global Warming curriculum are shown at: http://www.letus.northwestern.edu/projects/gw/ REFERENCES Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 261–271. Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28, 117–148. Blumenfeld, P. C., Marx, R. W., Patrick, H., Krajcik, J. S., & Soloway, E. (1997). Teaching for understanding. In B. J. Biddle, T. L. Good, & I. F. Goodson (Eds.), International handbook of teachers and teaching. (Vol. II, pp. 819–878). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Press. Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26, 369–398. Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Mortimer, E., & Scott, P. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12. Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 109–132. Edelson, D. C., Gordin, D. N., & Pea, R. D. (1999). Addressing the challenges of inquiry-based learning through technology and curriculum design. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 8, 391–450. Elliot, A. J., McGregor, H. A., & Gable, S. (1999). Achievement goals, study strategies, and exam performance: A mediational analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 549–563. Inzlicht, M., & Ben-Zeev, T. (2000). A threatening intellectual environment: Why females are susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males. Psychological Science, 11, 365–371. Lee, O., & Anderson, C. W. (1993). Task engagement and conceptual change in middle school science classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 30, 585–610. Lee, O., & Brophy, J. (1996). Motivational patterns observed in sixthgrade science classrooms. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 33, 303–318. Linn, M. C. (1997). The role of the laboratory in science learning. The Elementary School Journal, 97, 401–417. Lunetta, V. N. (1998). The school science laboratory: Historical perspectives and contexts for contemporary teaching. In D. Tobin & B. J. Fraser (Eds.), International handbook of science education (pp. 249–262). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Marx, R. W., Blumenfeld, P. C., Krajcik, J. S., & Soloway, E. (1997). Enacting project-based science. The Elementary School Journal, 97, 341–358. Meece, J. L., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Hoyle, R. H. (1988). Students’ goal orientations and cognitive engagement in classroom activities. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 514–523. Meece, J. L., & Holt, K. (1993). A pattern analysis of students’ achievement goals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 582–590. Middleton, M., & Midgley, C. (1997). Avoiding the demonstration of lack of ability: An underexplored aspect of goal theory. Journal of Educa-

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