ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the features of a classroom that support learning by taking account of children's emotional response to certain tasks and recognising the importance of how children see themselves as learners. It considers ways of motivating engagement and persistence in learning, looking particularly at how to encourage intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, motivation. The chapter looks at attitudes to learning in general, and the teacher's role in developing positive attitudes. It makes the ways of helping children's development of attitudes specifically relevant to learning science. Children learn in school far more than the official curriculum and even more than the wider curriculum that is implicit in aims such as learning how to learn, developing scientific literacy, thinking skills and so on. How children feel about themselves and the ideas that they encounter in the classroom influences their learning. If children are to develop willingness to act in certain ways, there must be opportunity for exercising choice.
