Relationship between Curiosity and Intrinsic Motivation

for Science Process Skills

Tuti Hardianti

, Lisa Ariyanti Pohan

, Julia Maulina

and Uswatun Hasanah

Physic Education, Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, Jl. Sisingamangaraja. Teladan-Medan. Medan, Indonesia

Chemistry Education, Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, Jl. Sisingamangaraja. Teladan-Medan. Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: Curiosity, Intrinsic-Motivation, Science Process Skills.

Abstract: This research aims to analyze (i) the initial curiosity, motivation, and science process skills of students (ii)

the relationship between curiosity and science process skills; (iii) the relationship between intrinsic

motivation and science process skills; and (iv) the relationship between curiosity and intrinsic motivation

toward science process skills.The subject in this study is students of 7th grade An-Nizam Junior High

School Medan. This type of research is quantitative descriptive. Data about the curiosity, intrinsic

motivation and science process skills were collected by test and nontest instruments. This research was

analyzed by using linear regression. The results showed that the intrinsic motivation and curiosity of An-

Nizam students are already in the high category but students' science process skills are still low. There is no

significant relationship between curiosity and science process skills (0.478 > 0.05), intrinsic motivation

and science process skills (0.910 > 0.05) and curiosity and intrinsic motivation toward science process skills

(0.673> 0.05).

1 INTRODUCTION

Education is essentially a conscious effort to develop

personality and abilities within and outside the

school(Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 20

of 2003 concerning the National Education System).

Education plays an important role in improving the

quality of human resources that support the progress

of development.

Students are resources that have the

fundamentals of potential that need to be developed

through education. All students basically want to

succeed in the learning process, but to achieve good

results, students find barriers that lead to failure in

achieving learning goals. Therefore, to achieve the

desired learning results, it is necessary to see some

factors that students have.

According to Ahmadi(Ahmadi,2005), the factors

that influence learning can be classified into two

parts, namely internal and external factors. Internal

factors are those that come from students.The

following are included in the internal factors such as

intelligence, physical factors or physiological

factors, attitudes, interests, talents, and intelligence.

While external factors cover social and

environmental factors nonsocial.In addition, Slameto

(Slameto,2013) states that external factors that can

affect learning are the family environment, school

environment, and community environment. Internal

and external factors significantly influence student’s

achievement. One of the most influential factors is

the curiosity and motivation factor.

The curiosity and motivation of a student is an

internal factor affecting the learning process in the

classroom. The curiosity is the initial asset for

students in the learning process. The curiosity will

encourage students to fulfill their motivation. In

order to fulfill his curiosity, the students will go into

the process of searching. The curiosity is a character

that comes from the processing of the mind (Samani,

dkk, 2012, p. 25). The curiosity makes students

more sensitive in observing the various phenomena

or events around them, and will open up challenging

new worlds and attract them to learn more deeply.

Sulistyowati (Sulistyowati,2012, p. 74) argues that

curiosity is the attitude and action that always try to

know more deeply and wider than what is learned,

seen, and heard.

Mustari (Mustari,2011, p. 109) argues that to

develop curiosity in children, the freedom of the

child itself must exist to perform and serve his

curiosity. One cannot simply rebuke somebody else

Hardianti, T., Pohan, L., Maulina, J. and Hasanah, U.

Relationship between Curiosity and Intrinsic Motivation for Science Process Skills.

DOI: 10.5220/0008893007230727

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR 2018) - , pages 723-727

ISBN: 978-989-758-437-4

723

who does not know or is lazy when asked or asking.

Findings from the psychology of curiosity can be

profitably employed to guide teaching practice, in a

range of educational contexts, to motivate students

to seek information (Pluck and Johnson,2011, p. 29).

In addition to curiosity, the intrinsic motivation

of a student is also an important factor in learning.

Motivation is a dominant factor in influencing the

learning process. Motivation is the main factor

driving someone to do something. Therefore,

motivation is a factor that influences student to

involveactively in learning. Motivation is a complex

part of human psychology and behavior that

influences how individuals choose to invest their

time, how much energy they exert in any given task,

how they think and feel about the task, and how long

they persist at the task (Bakar, 2014). The

motivation of students in science learning is a point

as supporting conditions to the central dogma of

academic performance and critical thinking in

school science. Moreover, motivation refers to

reasons that underlie behavior that is characterized

by the students’ interests, willingness, and volition

(Beal and Stevens, 2011).According to Ryan and

Deci (Ryan and Deci,2000), intrinsic motivation is

defined as doing an activity for its inherent

satisfaction rather than for some separable

consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person

is moved to act for the external challenge, pressures

or rewards.

The Intrinsic motivation can be stronger if given

outside encouragement. In the learning process, if

the students perceive the task as something

interesting, relevant personally, meaningfully, and at

a level appropriate to the student's abilities, they

think they can succeed in completing the task. The

intrinsic motivation will also strengthen if the task is

connected to by the real world and students have

control over the task. Teachers support students'

intrinsic motivation by increasing their curiosity and

being sensitive to individual differences in

motivating students (Santrock, 2013).The function

of intrinsic motivation for students is to encourage

student learning behavior, influence student learning

achievement, build learning that is more meaningful

and motivate the achievement of student learning

goals.

The factors of curiosity and motivation are

equally important factors in achieving the expected

learning outcomes, one of which is the mastery of

science process skills. Scientific process skills are

the result of learning in the form of scientific work

skills. Abungu (Abungu,2014) states that process

skills are the centers for procurement of the

scientific knowledge that is useful for solving

problems in society. Therefore, the development and

improvement of students’ process skills become

matters of importance for the teacher to do for the

attainment of learning objectives.Scientific process

skills can also be interpreted as an insight or

development of intellectual, social, and physical

skills derived from the fundamental ability that in

principle exists in the learner (Dimyati and

Mudjiono, 2006, p. 138).When learners interact in

the world of science, they find their own research

through the question, hypothesis, prediction,

investigation, interpretation, and communication

stages and these are what are called science process

skills (Ash, 1998).Process skills could be developed

through direct experiences as learning experience

(Rustaman, 2005).

Rezba et al. (Rezba et al.2007) said that science

process skills could be divided into two groups,

namely the basic skills and the integrated skills. The

basic skills consist of the observation,

communication, classification, measurement,

temporary/tentative/initial conclusion (or inference),

and prediction skills. The integrated skills consist of

the variable identification, table making, graph

making, inter-variable relation description, data

elicitation and processing, investigation analysis,

hypothesis construction, variable operational

definition, and investigation and experiment design

skill.

All of the science process skills cannot be

instantly mastered by students. They takes a process

of habituation and practice.Creating and setting

learning habits that can grow process skills in

learners will not be easy.Habits are only possible

through persistent processes, and sacrifices

accompanied by ongoing training for consistent

repetition.It is so difficult to build positive habits

because every habit must be driven by an

understanding of knowledge and capable of benefit

from the behavior.

Therefore, the factor from within the student is

an important part to assist the process of habituation,

such as curiosity and intrinsic motivation of student

so that the student process skills can be mastered

properly.

This study was conducted to see the early interest

and intrinsic motivation as well as its relationship

with students' science process skills because

basically the success or failure of learning depends

not only on external but also internal factors; both

factors are equally important.

ICMR 2018 - International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research

724

2 METHODS

The method of research in this study is quantitative

descriptive. This method provides a description of

the variables to be studied and investigate the

relationship between variables, among them is the

relationship between the variables of curiosity and

intrinsic motivation with sains process skills.

Figure 1: Design of research method.

The study was conducted at AN-Nizam junior

high school Medan. The subjects of the study were

students of 7th grades. The Technique of collecting

the data was done by a technique of test and nontest.

Science process skills are using test instrument for

data collection, while nontest technique is using

instrument in the form of the question to reveal data

about curiosity and intrinsic motivation.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Results

Based on the data analysis obtained, the results ca be

described as the following:

a. Curiosity (X1)

The curiosity obtained from the questionnaire is

shown in Figure2.

Based on Figure 2, it can be seen that students

who have high curiosity are 52, medium curiousity

34, and low curiousity 0. It indicates that the

curiosity of An-Nizam's students in this initial study

is essentially excellent.

Figure 2: The curiosity students with high, medium, and

low criteria.

b. Intrinsic Motivation (X2)

The curiosity obtained from the questionnaire is

shown in the Figure 3..

Figure 3: The intrinsic motivation students with high,

medium and low criteria.

Based on Figure 3, it can be seen that the

students who havehigh intrinsic motivation are 83,

medium intrinsic motivation3, and low intrinsic

motivation 0. It indicates that the intrinsic

motivation of An-nizam's students in this initial

study is essentially excellent.

High Medium Low

100

High Medium Low

Curiosity

Intrinsic

Motivation

ScienceProcess

Skills

Relationship between Curiosity and Intrinsic Motivation for Science Process Skills

725

c. Science Process Skills (Y)

The sains process skills obtained test is shown in

Figure 4.



Figure 4: The science process skills students with some

criteria.

Based on figure 4, it can be seen that students

who have science process skill with a very good

category are 0. Students who have good category are

13 and enough category 16. Students who have a

low category are 39. This indicates that science

process skills of An-nizam's students in the initial

study were low.

The results obtained were to find out the linear

relationship of curiosity (X1) and intrinsic

motivation (X2) towards scientific process skills (Y)

by conducting a linear regression test. The results of

the analysis with the SPSS assistance program for

several variables can be seen in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 1:Table of Significance of Curiosity and

Intrinsic Motivation.

Model Unstandardize

d Coefficients

Standa

rdized

Coeffi

cients

t Sig.

B Std.

Error

Beta

1 (Const

ant)

22.8 26.54

.85 .393

Curios

ity

.262 .367 .092 .71 .478

Motiv

ation

.027 .237 .015 .11 .910

Table 1 shows the significant value for the

curiosity of 0.478 (p> 0.05) so that the hypothesis is

rejected. It means that the curiosity variables have

no significant effect on the science process skills.

Furthermore, for intrinsic motivation variables, the

above data shows a significant value of 0.910

(p>0.05); therefore, the hypothesis is rejected. It

means that intrinsic motivation variables also have

no effect on the science process skill.

Table 2: Table of Significance of Curiosity and

Intrinsic Motivation toward Science Process Skills.

Model Sum

Squar

df Mean

Square

F Sig.

1 Regre

ssion

405.6

2 202.830 .398 .67

Resid

ual

39720

.882

78 509.242

Total 40126

.543



Table 2 shows the significant value of 0.673 (p>

0.05). It can be concluded that the hypothesis is

rejected. It means that the variables of curiosity and

intrinsic motivation have no significant effect

simultaneously on the science process skills.

3.2 Discussion

Based on the results, it has been found that the

motivation and curiosity of the students in this initial

study are in the high category. This can give a good

influence in the learning process because the success

or failure of a learning can be influenced by factors

from within the students. As revealed by Syah

(2006), there are several factors that affect the

learning achievement of internal factors and external

factors. Internal factors consist of physical and

psychological aspects (talents, attitudes, habits,

interests, motivation, and intelligence); External

factors consist of the social environment and

nonsocial environment.

The high curiosity and high motivation in this

initial study were not in line with the value of

students' science process skills. This can be seen that

there is no significant relationship between the

curiosity and science process skills (0,478>

0,005),intrinsic motivation and science process skills

(0.910> 0.05) and curiosity and motivation toward

students' science process skills (0.673> 0.05). This is

ICMR 2018 - International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research

726

because the science process skills are still quite

foreign to the students so that they feel unfamiliar in

doing tests related to the science process skills. In

addition, students are still rarely given lessons that

can improve the science process skills, though

science process skills are skills that need to be

trained to start from the basic level. This is in

accordance with the claim proposed by Padilla &

Okey (1984) who state that science process skills

need to be strongly emphasized in elementary,

middle, and secondary science curricula and

classrooms.

The findings of this initial study suggest that

there should be still a need to familiarize learning

that can improve the science process skills. In

addition, the curiosity and high motivation of

students can be a positive thing for the

implementation of a good learning process in the

future.

4 CONCLUSION

Based on the foregoing results, the following are

concluded: (1) The intrinsic motivation and curiosity

of An-Nizam students are already in the high

categorybut students' science process skills are still

low, (2) There is no significant relationship between

curiosity andscience process skills, (3) There is no

significant relationship between intrinsic motivation

andscience process skills and (4) There is no

significant relationship between curiosity and

intrinsic motivation toward science process skills.

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