Attention to the attitudes of preservice and inservice primary teachers toward science is of fundamental importance to research on primary science education. However, progress in this field of research has been slow due to the poor definition and conceptualization of the construct of primary teachers' attitude toward science. This poor theoretical background has led to the use of a multitude of different concepts and measurement instruments. The main goal of this article is to present a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for primary teachers' attitudes toward science. The framework is based on an extensive review of previously used concept definitions of the construct. It is argued that this framework should serve as a necessary conceptual basis for future research and interventions in this domain, as well as for the construction of valid measurement instruments. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96:158–182, 2012

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David McClelland’s research on the different kinds of (implicit) motives and how to measure them has had a substantial influence on contemporary psychology of motivation. He did not, however, reflect on the nature of implicit motives in much detail. In this article, I fill this gap. I argue that implicit motives should not be understood as mental states the agent has no introspective access to. Instead, I propose that the implicit motives that McClelland and others in the field distinguish—the power, achievement, and affiliation motive—are generic descriptions of specific ends an agent may act for. These motives are implicit, because they are not explicitly expressed but merely implied in what the agent does, thinks, and feels. Establishing whether an agent acts for or has a certain implicit motive, then, is a matter of interpreting the agent’s expressions. This proposal is in line with and explains the empirical findings.

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