How a Hands-on BIONICS Lesson May Intervene with Science Motivation and Technology Interest

Science is supposed to raise and support young children"s interest as early as possible, at the latest at the beginning of secondary school. Our empirical study monitored individual motivation levels towards science of 6th graders by applying established measures to 324 students (age M=12.2 years, 189 girls, 135 boys). The first empirical measure consisted of the Science Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ), the second of the Technology Questionnaire (TQ). Our lesson consisted of a student-centered outreach module about bionics within a zoological garden in combination with related exhibition. Measurement was conducted two weeks before (T0), directly after (T1) and six weeks (T2) after program participation. The factor structure of the SMQ-II we obtained showed a major difference to the published structure: our young sample couldn"t differentiate between intrinsic motivation (IM) and self-efficacy (SE). Moreover, the expected two subscales merged into one which we labelled self-confidence (SC). The other subscale “grade motivation” followed the expected factor structure of the original scale. While this latter subscale was unaffected by our intervention, the sub-scale SC peaked directly after program participation, but unfortunately did not sustain this shift over a six week time period. There were no gender differences at any testing point. Science motivation correlated at a low level with technology interest but failed to correlate with social implications of technology.