Situating Motivation

Nolen, Susan Bobbitt; Horn, Ilana Seidel; Ward, Christopher J.

doi:10.1080/00461520.2015.1075399

Cited by 106 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Engagement at this level is thought to represent the more "proximal processes" that developmental scholars argue fuel learning and development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998;Skinner & Pitzer, 2012). Engagement at this level also corresponds to situated views of motivation that emphasize the importance of understanding the contexts in which students' motivated beliefs and behaviors occur (Nolen, Horn, & Ward, 2015).…”

Section: Defining and Framing Student Engagement In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

2017

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Science education reform efforts in the Unites States call for a dramatic shift in the way students are expected to engage with scientific concepts, core ideas, and practices in the classroom. This new vision of science learning demands a more complex conceptual understanding of student engagement and research models that capture both the multidimensionality and contextual specificity of student engagement in science. In a unique application of person-oriented analysis of experience sampling data, we employ cluster analysis to identify six distinct momentary engagement profiles representing different combinations of the behavioral, cognitive, and affective dimensions of student engagement in high school science classrooms. Students spend a majority of their classroom time in one of several engagement profiles characterized by high engagement on one dimension, but low levels on the others. Students exhibited low engagement across all three dimensions of engagement in about 22% of our observations. Full engagement, or high levels across all three dimensions, is the least frequent profile, occurring in only 11% of the observations. Students' momentary engagement profiles are related in meaningful ways to both the learning activity in which students are engaged and the types of choices they are afforded. Laboratory activities provided especially polarized engagement experiences, producing full engagement, universally low engagement, and pleasurable engagement in which students are affectively engaged but are not engaged cognitively or behaviorally. Student choice is generally associated with more optimal engagement profiles and the specific type of choice matters in important ways. Choices about how to frame the learning activity have the most positive effects relative to other types of choices, such as choosing whom to work with or how much time to take. Results are discussed in terms of implications for practice and the utility of the methodological approach for evaluating the complexities of student engagement in science classrooms.

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Section: Defining and Framing Student Engagement In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

2017

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“…Hand and Gresalfi (2015/this issue), in their study of identity development, attend to fine-grained levels of social activity as it occurs using ethnographic field notes and content logs of videos as they follow participants over time. Nolen et al (2015/this issue) also rely on thick description,…”

Section: Methodology To Support a Situative Perspectivementioning

confidence: 98%

“…Hall and Jurow (this issue), for example, reason from several situative studies of very different activity systems to draw conclusions about change in representational practices more generally. Nolen et al (2015/this issue) compared eight novice teachers in different contexts over years, focusing on identifying processes that accounted for their motivation to adopt particular teaching practices. They argue that rather than the construction of generalizable models, the aims of this approach are (a) to account for both the dynamic complexity of motives of different individuals to learn (or not learn) within and across particular social contexts over time and (b) to identify useful patterns and dimensions in activity within contexts that can inform the more effective design or redesign of learning environments.…”

Section: Generalizabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: The Relevance of the Situative Perspective in Educational Psychology

Turner

Nolen

2015

Educational Psychologist

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The situative perspective in educational psychology has inspired interest and debate at least since the fruitful exchanges in Educational Researcher between 1994 and 1998 between Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996 and Greeno (1997). A special issue of Educational Psychologist (2007) followed, in which authors responded to Lucia Mason's charge, "Bridging the Cognitive and Sociocultural Approaches in Research on Conceptual Change: Is it Feasible?" There have been special sessions at AERA on the same general topic, the relative utility of cognitive and sociocultural or situative approaches. Why did we think it was time to raise the topic again?This special issue comes at a time when educational psychology may be losing ground to other research communities as the primary disciplinary approach for studying learning. Many who formerly identified as educational psychologists have migrated to the learning sciences. One important reason is that they find the cognitive or social cognitive perspectives on learning that dominate educational psychology research to be limiting. These traditional perspectives have focused more on individuals than on individuals as members of learning communities that change over cultural and historical time. For example, the predominant social cognitive perspective has focused primarily on individuals with the social context "in the background" (e.g., "math class"). The social cognitive perspective regards learning or achievement more as an individual difference than as one of many aspects of a learning context as system. The situative perspective seeks to understand the relation of achievement or motivation to the situation, including what participants did, how "learning" was constructed in the class, the role of student identity in learning, the nature and consequences of discourse, the materials used, and so on. Learning scientists and others who take a situative perspective believe it is important not just to predict outcomes generally but also to examine and explain how outcomes develop in context. They argue that knowing how learning, motivation, identity, and the like, arise in contexts may provide more useful information for changing or improving those systems and their outcomes in the future.We believe that educational psychologists would profit from the opportunity to understand the situative perspective better for several reasons. First, we seek to inform our field about recent innovations in a perspective that has direct relevance to the research we do. The situative perspective has become increasingly common in many fields of psychology, including those closely related to educational psychology, such as developmental psychology (see the 2012 special issue of Human Development), modern social and sociocultural psychology, ecological psychology, and recent studies in neuroscience (e.g., Adolphs, 2003). We need to participate in this conversation. Second, because educational psychology has an important history in research on learning, the situative perspective could enliven and enhance...

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“…They discuss ways in which their consideration of findings of studies of teacher learning and practice resulted in their adoption of a situative perspective for interpreting these results, and they use the perspective in reinterpreting their and others' findings. Nolen et al (2015/this issue) also write, "A situative account of motives and goals, then, has to explain why individuals take up practices in particular contexts as a function of their ongoing participation in social practices" (p. 235). Their explanatory accounts include hypotheses about individual learners' values and beliefs, along with hypotheses about learners' positioning in professional communities, taking into account characteristics both of individuals and contexts.…”

Section: Learning Sciences and Policy Program University Of Pittsburghmentioning

confidence: 96%

Commentary: Some Prospects for Connecting Concepts and Methods of Individual Cognition and of Situativity

Greeno

2015

Educational Psychologist

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Situating Motivation

Cited by 106 publications

References 66 publications

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

Introduction: The Relevance of the Situative Perspective in Educational Psychology

Commentary: Some Prospects for Connecting Concepts and Methods of Individual Cognition and of Situativity

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