**2. Education achievement and intrinsic motivation of marginalised children**

Despite the importance of science nowadays in STEM education, science education has tended to be perceived as irrelevant and not interested by marginalised children. As Brianzoni and Cardellini [20] stated, many learners are often not interested in school science. Although various efforts and programmes has been taken by the Ministry of Education (MOE), marginalised children in Malaysia still showed low and unsatisfactory level in science performance [21, 22]. The level of science education among marginalised children still lags behind as compared to mainstream children. This is because marginalised children often associated with lower academic achievement when compared with children in the mainstream flow This situation not only happen in Malaysia but also faced by other countries such as Canada, Taiwan and New Zealand [23–28]. This is consistent with [29] which states that there are differences exist globally between the education level of native learners and non-native learners in their respective countries.

Overall, the motivation level to learn in school among marginalised children in Malaysia still consider low and has been reported to be at unsatisfactory level [30, 31]. This is further strengthened by Refs. [9, 32] which showed that Malaysian learners have low motivation in learning science. According to Mohammad and Abdul [33], the lack of motivation in learning has contributed to the occurrence of dropout and truancy from school that directly affects their academic achievement. Therefore, it is very important to raise the level of intrinsic motivation among marginalised children in Malaysia. With the increasing level of intrinsic motivation, hopefully, it can have a positive impact on the academic achievement of marginalised children.

Many studies conducted show there is a significant positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and academic achievement [6, 8, 11, 12, 34]. This relationship leads to the conclusion that the motivation can be used to predict the academic achievement of learners [35]. Therefore, we as educators are obliged to increase efforts to ensure that marginalised children have access not only to appropriate education but also to a scientific culture.

Hence, a form of science education that is holistic needs to be created to produce marginalised children who are science literate capable of applying science and technology to overcome the challenges of life now and in the future. Implementing new instructional strategies and pedagogies in science education for marginalised children is extremely important to drastically improve the scientific literacy by giving value and enjoyment in learning science. New strategies needed to create opportunities for marginalised children to be motivated and actively involved in learning science, not only in the classroom, but also outside of traditional classroom. LOC primary science module requires teachers take children out of the classroom during the science T&L process. Hence, the learning process will occur in locations that are close to the environment. Marginalised children need to see its relevance in a societal sense to have the opportunity to be engaged in meaningful learning. This is because forest and the environment are important elements in their daily life. This fun and enjoyable situation will have positive impact and effect on their learning process and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, Ref. [36] mentioned that LOC approach will be able to build dynamic knowledge and subsequently can explore the skills and abilities of the children. This is to prepare them to face the future when pursuing STEM careers that are highly competitive in the twenty-first century.
