ISSN 2039-9340 Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 3 (11) November 2012 415 Zimbabwean Science Students’ Perceptions of Their Classroom Learning Environments and Attitude Towards Science Mandina Shadreck Department of Educational Foundations, Management and Curriculum Studies Midlands State University P Bag 9055 Gweru, Zimbabwe Email: mandinas@msu.ac.zw, mandinashadreck@yahoo.com, phone: 263 54 260464 Doi:10.5901/mjss.2012.v3n11p415 Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to examine Zimbabwean junior secondary school students’ perceptions of their classroom environment in science and to investigate relationships between these perceptions and students’ attitudes toward science. The study also aimed to investigate differences in students’ attitudes toward science by gender, school location. Data were collected from 1728 Zimbabwean junior secondary school science students in 10 Kwekwe district schools. Data were collected with an adapted and modified version of the “What is Happening in This Classroom” (WIHIC) instrument and the “Test of Science Related Attitudes” (TOSRA). The study confirmed that the Zimbabwean version of the modified WIHIC is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the classroom learning environment in the Zimbabwean educational context. Significant differences between students’ perceptions of the actual and preferred learning environment were shown to exist with students tending to prefer a more favorable classroom learning environment than the one which they actually are experiencing. Female students generally hold more positive perceptions of the learning environments than their male counterparts. The findings also revealed that student’ perceptions of the classroom learning environment depending on the schools’ locality, with students in rural schools holding less favorable perceptions than students in urban schools for all seven WIHIC scales. Correlation and regression analyses revealed that students’ perceptions of their learning environment in science were significantly associated with their attitudes. Key words: Learning environment; Science classroom; Student perceptions; Attitude towards science 1. Introduction The classroom environment has a powerful influence on learning, and children's perceptions of that environment influence their behavior. The classroom environment is thus an important determinant of student learning in an educational system (Fraser, 1998a). Students learn better when they perceive the classroom environment more positively, thus the study of classroom environment has become a concern to educators, researchers, administrators of the school system and parents. Numerous researches on classroom environment or climates have been conducted years ago and have provided a lot of valuable information for educators and researchers on students’ perceptions of classroom environment ( Fraser, 1998a, 1998b; Dorman, 2003; den Brok et al., 2006; Wahyudi and Treagust, 2004; Rickards et al., 2003). Research studies in maths, physics, chemistry, and biology education have shown that student perceptions of the classroom environment account for appreciable amounts of variance in learning outcomes, often beyond that attributable to background student characteristics. Moreover, students’ perceptions of their teachers’ behavior do act as one set of important mediators between the actual behaviors of teachers and the actual performance of learning activities by each student (Jennings and Greenberg, 2009; Den Brok, 2001; Shuell, 1996). That is, students will only react upon those teacher behaviors that they observe and will interpret (perceive) these behaviors each in their personal idiosyncratic ways (Shuell, 1996; Stahl, 1987). Thus, in order to stimulate and optimize student learning and the environment in which they learn, knowledge of students’ perceptions of this environment and the factors that in ﾀXHQFH WKHVH SHUFHSWLRQV LV FUXFLDO for both teachers and educational researchers. Research studies on classroom learning environments have employed a number of salient and robust instruments that have been validated and cross-validated (Fraser, 1998a, 1998b). This educational area has attracted researchers from non-Western countries, such as Brunei (Khine and Fisher, 2003; Majeed et al., 2002 ), Korea (Kim, Fisher & Fraser, 2000;), Taiwan (Aldridge, Fraser & Huang, 1999), Nigeria (Idiris & Fraser, 1997), Papua New Guinea (Raj, 1998), Singapore (Wong & Fraser, 1996), India (Koul and Fisher, 2003), Indonesia (Wahyudi and Treagust, 2004) and Turkey