An investigation of high school students' physics achievement in terms of their achievement goal orientations, self efficacy beliefs and learning conceptions of physics

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the contributions of high school students’ achievement goal orientations, physics learning self efficacy beliefs and physics learning conceptions on their physics performance. In addition, high school students’ achievement goal orientations, physics learning self efficacy beliefs, and physics learning conceptions were examined in terms of gender and grade differences. Comparisons between sciencemathematics and literature mathematics groups were also made in order to investigate field differences. The sample of this study consisted of 583 students from ninth, tenth and eleventh grades. Quantitative data collection methods were used in this investigation. The instruments that were administrated to students were the Achievement Goal Orientation Questionnaire (AGQ), Physics Learning Self Efficay Questionnaire (PLSEQ) and Physics Learning Conceptions Questionnaire (PLCQ). In order to analyze data multiple regression analysis, two-way ANOVA and one-way MANOVA were used. The results of this study suggested that high school students’ achievement goal orientations, physics learning self efficacy beliefs and physics learning conceptions explain 12.4 per cent of variance of their physics performance. Male students obtained higher physics learning self efficacy and qualitative physics learning conception scores compared to female students. In terms of field differences, science-mathematics and literature-mathematics groups had significantly different scores from most of the scales.