The primary aim of this study was two-fold: 1) to identify salient psychosocial features of the classroom environment that influence students' motivation and self-regulation in science learning; and 2) to examine the effect of the motivational constructs of learning goal orientation, science task value and self-efficacy in science learning on…

An outcome of science education is that young people have the understandings and skills to participate in public debate and make informed decisions about science issues that influence their lives. Toulmin's argumentation skills are emerging as an effective strategy to enhance the quality of evidence based decision making in science classrooms. In…

This paper reports and discusses the principal findings of an Australian study exploring the decisions of high achieving Year 10 students about taking physics and chemistry courses (Lyons, 2003). The study used a "multiple worlds" framework to explore the diverse background characteristics that previous quantitative research had shown…