| Summary: | Science education has been searching for new strategies to involve students in scientific investigation processes. These strategies should stimulate questioning, predicting results by means of experimentation as well as developing abilities for discussing results. They should also provi de the students with the capacity of understanding how the scientific knowledge is continuously produced rather than transmitting scientific facts to them . Since 1985, the Instituto de BioquímicaMédica,UFRJ , has offered a science education program consisting in v acation coursesdirected to students and teachersof basic education . During the years, the program grew and spread through the country becoming a network involving 23 different research group s. In the courses , the participantsdevelop practicalactivitiesand are encouraged to think about a biological topic, to raise question sabout it and propose experiments to answer the ir questions. The course iscoordinated by a staff and by graduated students that act as instructo rs, helpingthe participants to do the experiments idealized by them . In this work weinvestigate dthe factors that raise the interest and the motivation for science in the participants. For this, fieldworkand questionnaire analyses were performed. The questionnaires were filled up b y the teachersin the beginning and in the end of the course, and the method of contentanalysis was used to readthe answers. The results show ed that the motivation for science was raised by a strong emotional component generated by different factors, as the interaction with the instructors; the availability of resources; and the fact that they become more autonomous in the process of reconstruction of their knowledge.
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