Exploring the role of motivation in STEM education: A systematic review

Abstract

Motivation is an essential factor influencing learners’ active participation in STEM subjects and their decision to study STEM fields. This study aimed to determine the current state of research on motivation and STEM and systematically review the current research in the literature. The study examined 78 articles published in journals indexed in the SCOPUS database. Two researchers collected and analyzed the data using the content analysis method. The results showed that the first research on motivation and STEM were published in 2008, and most research papers were published in 2021. The results also showed that most studies were conducted in the United States (47.8%), and the preferred participants were undergraduates (28.1%), high school students (26.7%), and middle school students (14%), respectively. In addition, the results revealed that researchers primarily used the quantitative method to collect data, and a substantial ratio of the studies (83%) investigated student-level factors. Based on the results obtained from this study, it can be concluded that there is a need to comprehensively present the main research results on motivation in STEM education. We suggest that future research should examine databases such as ERIC, ProQuest, and Web of Science and include other documents in the analysis, including book chapters, conference papers, dissertations, and theses.