Abstract
This article analyzes the students' motivation towards science learning in two MENA countries, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), based on the PISA data in 2015. We examined the impact of teachers' practices on children's motivation and on the time they spend learning out-of-schools, using the ordered probit and count data regressions. Our results highlight a positive association between students' motivation and teachers' practices in classrooms, like clarifying scientific ideas, tailoring the classroom lessons to students, or providing individual help when a student has difficulties to understand a topic. However, results show clearly that the profile of the UAE and Tunisian education systems are quite contrasted. The main contrast concerns the gendered and the education-level effects.