Reasons Students Avoid Reading About Science:
- Unappealing Text. Students might be overwhelmed by the amount of new material presented in their science textbook (Richardson & Morgan 2003, p. 98-99).
- Conflict of Ideas. Science concepts might conflict with the student's own concept of the world. As a result, the student might not readily accept the new ideas (Hynd, Holschuh, & Nist 2000).
- Lack of Interest. Students might become bored with or lack interest in the subject, causing them to become disengaged (Black 2004; Hynd et. al. 2000; Pintrich 2003).
- Poor literacy skills. Students might possess poor reading skills. As a result, student may avoid participating in class, especially in reading (Richardson & Morgan 2003
What Motivates Students?
- GOALS. Students are motivated by goals. These might be content-mastery goals or performance goals or a combination of both (Patrick & Yoon 2004; Pintrich 2003).
- VALUES. Students are motivated by values that reflect their interests. If they can see the relevance or usefulness of a subject as it applies to them personally, then they will be more interested in learning about that subject because of the value they place on it (Hynd et. al. 2000; Patrick & Yoon 2004; Pintrich 2003).
- VALUES. Prior positive experiences, with a subject, such as listening to and meeting a well-known researcher, can affect the value students place on learning that subject (Pintrich 2003).
- CONTROL BELIEFS. Students are motivated by control beliefs. That is, a student might be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated (Good & Brophy 2003, p. 223-235; Pintrich 2003).
- SOCIAL INTERESTS. Students are motivated by social interests. Students tend to stay in the affective domain of learning. As a result, a student's attitude towards school might be influenced by their peers. Students want to be accepted by their peers and if their peers view learning as "uncool", then they might lose the motivation to learn in order to feel accepted by their peers (Richardson & Morgan 2003, p. 33-35; Viadero 1996).
What Educators Might Be Doing Wrong
- Overemphasizing rote learning. Educators might be overemphasizing rote-learning techniques, by emphasizing grades rather than effort and encouraging memorization or individual facts rather than application of concepts and knowledge (Harada & Yoshina 2004; Hynd et. al. 2000).
- Encouraging Passive Learning. Educators might be encouraging "passive learning" by routinely teaching lessons through lectures (Richardson & Morgan 2003, p. 23-24).