The paper is focused on a part of a research conducted on secondary school chemistry students and teachers. Students' and teachers' attitudes towards particular topics from secondary school chemistry subject matter are presented.
Students (N = 596) and teachers (N = 118) were provided 12 topics and were asked to evaluate their importance, difficulty and the amount of attention given to the topic in education. A product of difficulty and the amount of attention gives the motivational potential (MP) of each topic which is the main focus of this paper.
The MPs given by both students and teachers are compared and statistically significantly different values further discussed. In the comparison, both the student and teacher groups were divided into grammar school and vocational school.
As the vocational schools differ, vocational school students are further divided according to particular types of secondary vocational schools. From the twelve topics in eight of them students' and teachers' answers differed.
The differences and its meaning are discussed in the paper.