Interest, motivation and attitude towards science and technology at K-12 levels: a systematic review of 12 years of educational research

Abstract

The relationship that exists between students and science and technology (S&T) is a complex and important one. If it is positive, then social, economic and environmental consequences are to be expected. Yet, many problems of interest/motivation/attitude (I/M/A) towards S&T have been recorded. A lot of research has been conducted on this topic and a certain number of syntheses have been proposed, but very few of them have followed sufficiently systematic procedures. In this article, we offer a synthetic and systematic description of 228 research articles that were published between 2000 and 2012 and indexed in the ERIC database under I/M/A for S&T at K-12 levels. We focus on the origin of these articles, on the constructs they use and define, on the instruments, and finally on the results they provide, whether correlative or causal. Conclusions and recommendations for future research and interventions are formulated. © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.