How to enhance students motivation and ability to communicatein science class discourse
... To motivate students as well as to enhance their willingness and the ability to communicate about scientific contents is one of the three central guidelines demanded by German science educators to promote scientific literacy and especially chemical literacy. Not only the TIMS-Study shows that science instruction is not very successful in this field. On the basis of classroom-obsersations and students´ perceptions of motivational patterns of their science classes, I would like to show, how students become motivated to communicate and what teachers can do to enhance their willingness and ability to participate more actively and more satisfactorily during classroom discourses related to science. ... To motivate students as well as to enhance their willingness and their ability to communicate about scientific contents is one of the three fundamental guidelines demanded by german science educators in order to promote scientific literacy - and especially chemical literacy (MNU, 1989; bmb+f, 1997). The TIMS-Video-Study and other publications in science education show that German science teachers are not very sucessful in this subject (Baumert et al. ... The objectives were to find out what are the reasons for this unsuccesful teaching and what should be done to enhance students´ motivation and achievement in chemistry classes.