A motivação em sala de aula: o que dizem os alunos sobre as aulas de Física do Ensino Médio?

Students’ motivation in physics classes has been a major concern of all science teachers. Even if there were a variety of didactic and pedagogical resources available, such as a well-equipped computer lab, a structured physics laboratory for all contents, an updated library, as well as teacher’s assistants to clarify the doubts of the students, even so motivate students during the classes would continue to be an obstacle to be overcome, as this is an exceptionally broad difficulty. This work was carried out through a field research subsidized by a bibliographic study to investigate the motivation factor with high school students during the physics classes. The field research was accomplished in a public high school in the northern region of Ceará and involved the application of a questionnaire containing 5 (five) questions applied to 60 (sixty) students from high school, between 14 (fourteen) and 35 (thirty-five) years of age. The results reveal some notable obstacles involved in physics teaching and highlight the nocturnal teaching, where the percentage of students who consider themselves motivated to study the discipline is much lower than in the morning period. Facing this fact, it is pertinent to understand the underlying problems and to point out possibilities for overcoming the problem.