Contact with living animals is an exceptional possibility within biology
education to facilitate an intense immersion into the study topic and even allow for
a flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Further, it might affect the perceptions of
the students’ basic needs for autonomy and competence and thereby their quality of
motivation (Deci and Ryan 1985, 2002). Still, there is little empirical evidence about
the duration of the exposure with living animals that is required. We investigated the
students’ flow experience, and the students’ motivation, reported retrospectively in
three different treatments: lessons involving short-term or long-term contact with
living harvest mice and a control group without living animals. Our sample consisted
of 156 fifth graders (10.76 years, SD=0.513). The test instruments were adapted
versions of the Flow Short Scale (FSS, Rheinberg et al. 2003) and of the Intrinsic
Motivation Inventory (IMI, Ryan 1982). As expected, the control group produced
significantly lower scores for both FSS and IMI. In addition, we found a significant
difference between students with short-term versus long-term contact. Whereas the
flow experience was indistinguishable for all pupils who had contact with living
animals, those with long-term experience reported significantly higher intrinsic
motivation.

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Tersedia

• The Benefits of Mouse Keeping—an Empirical Study on Students’ Flow and Intrinsic Motivation in Biology Lessons

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