Relationships to knowledge of secondary III students in Greater Montreal: The case of science and mathematics
This paper seeks to verify whether two of the trends most often revealed in the educational science literature can be confirmed once again: 1) a shrinking of young people’s interest in mathematics and sciences around the age of 14 to 16; and 2) the distancing of certain paths by some students, which might have led to the pursuit of a scientific career. The methodology deployed, qualitative in nature, led to the description and analysis of the content of nearly 500 reports of knowledge written by pupils in the third secondary enrolled in four different schools. The results obtained nuance these two major findings and rather reveal a strong internalization of school standards in general and the perceived usefulness of mathematics and sciences in particular.