Abstract
BackgroundThe students’ motivation to learn basic sciences in health science curricula is poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of different components of motivation (intrinsic motivation, self-determination, self-efficacy and extrinsic -career and grade- motivation) on learning human histology in health science curricula and their relationship with the final performance of the students in histology.MethodsGlynn Science Motivation Questionnaire II was used to compare students’ motivation components to learn histology in 367 first-year male and female undergraduate students enrolled in medical, dentistry and pharmacy degree programs.ResultsFor intrinsic motivation, career motivation and self-efficacy, the highest values corresponded to medical students, whereas dentistry students showed the highest values for self-determination and grade motivation. Genders differences were found for career motivation in medicine, self-efficacy in dentistry, and intrinsic motivation, self-determination and grade motivation in pharmacy. Career motivation and self-efficacy components correlated with final performance in histology of the students corresponding to the three curricula.ConclusionsOur results show that the overall motivational profile for learning histology differs among medical, dentistry and pharmacy students. This finding is potentially useful to foster their learning process, because if they are metacognitively aware of their motivation they will be better equipped to self-regulate their science-learning behavior in histology. This information could be useful for instructors and education policy makers to enhance curricula not only on the cognitive component of learning but also to integrate students’ levels and types of motivation into the processes of planning, delivery and evaluation of medical education.
Highlights
The students’ motivation to learn basic sciences in health science curricula is poorly understood
When the overall mean scores for the different components were correlated with the final performance in histology of the students corresponding to the three curricula, we found a significant positive correlation (p < 0.05 and r = 0.666) for the components 2 and 4
When the overall mean scores for these two components were correlated with the final performance in histology of the students corresponding to the three curricula, we did not found a significant correlation
Summary
The students’ motivation to learn basic sciences in health science curricula is poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of different components of motivation (intrinsic motivation, self-determination, self-efficacy and extrinsic -career and grade- motivation) on learning human histology in health science curricula and their relationship with the final performance of the students in histology. [16], it is self-regulated, which occurs when students assume conscious control over their motivation and behavior in a way which leads to desirable learning outcomes Within this theoretical framework, the motivation to learn science is defined as an internal state that maintains science-learning behavior, and as a multicomponent construct made up of, among other components, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, self-determination and self-efficacy [3,16], which are supported by different theories [10,17,18,19]. One of the innovative aspects recently introduced by Glynn and cols. [16] is the transformation of the classical scale termed extrinsic motivation into two scales, i.e. grade motivation, related to short-term goals, and career motivation, related to long-term goals, which more clearly target the objectives that students perceive to be important in this stage of their education [25]
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