The Relationship Between Scientific Epistemological Beliefs and Motivation of Learning (surface - deep) and Conception of Learning Science among Students of basic science Urmia University

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between scientific epistemological beliefs, motivation of learning (surface - deep) and conception of learning. A total of 339 students of basic during the academic year 2015-2016 at Urmia University, Iran, were selected through stratified random sampling for this study. The present study is descriptive and correlational. The total number of the population consisted of 2926 students. The following questionnaires were used in order to collect the data: Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale (SEBs), Motivation Learning Scale (MLS) and Conceptions of Learning (COLS). Pearson coefficient and regression were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that there is a positive and meaningful relationship between scientific epistemological beliefs and constructive conception of learning. However, there was not any significant relationship between scientific epistemological beliefs and reproduced conception of learning. Nor was there any significant relationship between reproduced conception of learning and motivation of learning. Nevertheless, a positive and meaningful relationship was observed between science constructive learning and motivation of learning. Besides, regression analysis results indicated that scientific epistemological beliefs play a meaningful role in predicting the conception of learning. However, motivation of learning did not predict the conception of learning. The results of this study showed that scientific epistemological beliefs through conception of learning play a important role in students\' motivation of learning.