The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among secondary school students&rsquo / attitudes, motivation and self-efficacy beliefs toward chemistry lessons and to determine the effect of grade levels, gender and school type on each dependent variable. The study was conducted during fall semester of 2011&ndash / 2012 academic year in four high schools which are general public high school, Anatolian public high school, vocational public high school, and general private high school in Ankara. Cluster random sampling method was applied and 813 students taking chemistry course participated to the study. Attitude Scale Toward Chemistry (ASTC), Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire-Turkish Version (MSLQ-TV), and High School Chemistry Self Efficacy Scale for cognitive skills (HCSS) were used as measuring instruments. The collected data were analyzed with correlational analysis and with three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for each dependent variable. v The results of the analyses displayed that there were high correlations among students&rsquo / attitudes, motivation, and self-efficacy beliefs toward chemistry lessons. Furthermore, the results showed that school type and gender of the students had ignificant effect on their attitudes, motivation, and self-efficacy beliefs toward chemistry lessons. For instance, students in private public high school had the highest and students in vocational public high school had the lowest attitudes, and girls were more motivated than boys toward chemistry lessons. However, grade level of the students had no significant effect on their attitude, motivation, and self-efficacy beliefs toward chemistry lessons.

The purposes of this study were to explore students&rsquo / perceptions of the extent to which constructivist approaches are present in chemistry classes at high school level in Turkey, to assess students&rsquo / perceptions of their chemistry teachers&rsquo / communication behaviours in their classroom learning environments and to investigate the learning strategies of students in chemistry classes considering school type, gender, and grade level differences. In this study, the Constructivist Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLES), the Teacher Communication Behaviour v Questionnaire (TCBQ) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) were used as measuring instruments. In addition, the questionnaires included some questions for demographic characteristics of participants. The study was conducted in conveniently selected two schools (private and public) in Ankara with a total of 994 ninth and tenth grade students in the second term of 2006-2007 semesters. Data obtained from the administration of measuring instruments by using the analysis of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) The results of the study indicated that school type, gender and grade level of the students had significant effect on perception of classroom learning environment, teacher&rsquo / communication behaviour and perceived use of learning strategies. For instance, students in private schools perceived their classroom-learning environment more constructivist than student in public school. In addition girls rated that, their learning environment and teachers&rsquo / communication behaviours more favourably than did boys. The study also showed that students use rehearsal-learning strategy mostly in their chemistry classrooms.