This essay is based on students' growing lack of interest in science at school. Both from a democratic and social perspective, this is a worrying factor for the future. Through observation, I investigated how five science teachers conduct their teaching. This is to get a better understanding of how teachers' behaviour in the classroom can affect students' interest in science. With a socio-cultural research approach, I have tried to highlight a few pieces of the puzzle that may explain students' declining interest in science. The questions that this paper answer, are:
My results show that in the classroom, there are mainly one-sided communications. Where the teacher explains for the students and they are expected to sit quietly and listen. The teachers made no developmental questions, such as how and why? I thought I saw a hint, that the students have a greater need for dialogue, as they like to turn to their classmates to discuss. One conclusion is that teachers are engaged in constructivist learning, while students seeking a more social constructivist or socio-cultural environment. I think this is a small important piece of the puzzle to understand why students lose interest in science at school. I believe that when students don’t feel that science lessons approaching student life world can a gulf developing between teaching and students. This is probably something that has a profound influence on students' attitude and that may be causing the feeling that education is outdated and boring. Teachers do not work proactively to engage students in the science education and they seem to live in the notion that the subject itself is interesting enough. One way to create an engagement is to illustrate the more general educational perspective on science as a particular curriculum addresses. My study shows that even though teachers believe that a more general view of perspective should lead in education lessons they draw more from a more scientific tradition.