Allan Wigfield

University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park

The present study explored a set of plausible directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of constructs involved in Situated Expectancy–Value Theory (SEVT) using cross-sectional data. To do so, three datasets (n = 1,540; 1,867; and 103) with expectancy, values, and prior achievement constructs were used. First, networks showed a consistent magnitude of associat...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

In this chapter, we examined the relations between constructs found within expectancy-value theory (EVT), now called situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT), and engagement dimensions. We first discuss the various definitions of the five proposed dimensions of engagement and discuss how some of these definitions share overlap with how constructs in...

Researchers developing questionnaire measures of personality, motivation, and self-regulation constructs related to students’ achievement and persistence in STEM or other fields rarely have examined whether the items on the measures used are functioning differently across groups, which is necessary for accurate group comparison. The present study a...

Adolescents’ Engagement in Academic Literacy Edited By John T. Guthrie, Allan Wigfield and Susan Lutz Klauda Final Report to NICHD, USA

Teachers’ perceived teaching competence is a multifaceted motivational factor that can shape their instructional decisions, persistence, and engagement in teaching. However, existing evidence on the theorized associations between teachers’ perceived competence (e.g., perceived effectiveness in the classroom) and important student outcomes such as s...

Academic motivation is an essential predictor of school success in K 12 education. Accordingly, many meta-analyses have examined variables associated with academic motivation. However, a central question remains unanswered: What is the relative strength of the relations of both student variables (achievement, socioemotional variables, and backgroun...

We review work on the development of children's and adolescents’ achievement motivation, focusing on recent advances in the empirical work in the field and commenting on the status of current theories prominent in the literature. We first focus on the main theories guiding the field and the development of motivational beliefs, values, and goals; in...

Motivational interventions grounded in Eccles and colleagues’ situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT) can promote students’ motivational beliefs and academic performance. However, most prior work has focused on one construct, perceived utility value. SEVT includes multiple constructs found to influence students’ academic motivation, performance, an...

When grit was first introduced, it gained popularity before basic psychometric questions were fully explored. One critical issue is how distinct grit is from the Big Five personality trait conscientiousness. Most studies have examined correlations between grit and conscientiousness, rather than conducting item-level factor analysis. This study exam...

The authors connect Möller and Marsh’s dimensional comparison theory with Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory of achievement performance and choice, to help explain the observed relations between key constructs in expectancy-value theory and their relations to individuals’ achievement outcomes by specifying processes that unde...

Grit is defined as passion and perseverance for achieving long-term goals and consists of two proposed subcomponents: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort. It has become a much-discussed construct even though research on its underlying factor structure has produced inconclusive results. Furthermore, grit as measured by its most frequ...

Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory of achievement choice has guided much research over the last 40+ years. In this article, we discuss five “macro” level issues concerning the theory. Our broad purposes in taking this approach are to clarify some issues regarding the current status of the theory, make suggestions for next steps for rese...

We discuss the development of Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues' expectancy-value model of achievement motivation (now called SEVT for situated expectancy value theory) and review the research on the part of the model that concerns the development of children's expectancies and values and their relations to performance and activity choice. We focus...

Different cross‐domain trajectories in the development of students’ ability self‐concepts (ASCs) and their intrinsic valuing of math and language arts were examined in a cross‐sequential study spanning Grades 1 through 12 (n = 1,069). Growth mixture modeling analyses identified a Moderate Math Decline/Stable High Language Arts class and a Moderate...

This chapter begins with a discussion of the nature of children’s achievement motivation and how it develops over the school years, with a focus on the competence-related belief, value, goal, interest, and intrinsic motivation aspects of motivation that have been emphasized in much recent research on motivation. Following is a discussion of how dif...

This study compared two expectancy-value-theory-based interventions designed to promote college students’ motivation and performance in introductory college physics. The utility value intervention was adapted from prior research and focused on helping students relate course material to their lives in order to perceive the material as more useful. T...

We discuss the development of achievement motivation from the perspective of Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory (EVT), focusing on the importance of children developing positive expectancies for success and valuing of achievement to help them cope with change and uncertainty. Although research has shown that, overall, children’s expecta...

The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning - by K. Ann Renninger February 2019

Interventions can enhance students' motivation for reading, but few researchers have assessed the effects of the specific motivation-enhancing practices that comprise these interventions. Even fewer have evaluated how students' perceptions of different intervention practices impact their later motivation and academic outcomes. In this study, we uti...

A growing body of research suggests that interventions promoting students’ utility value for an academic subject can improve their academic outcomes. However, numerous questions remain regarding how much to adapt prior intervention materials to promote utility value in new educational contexts, and how implementation constraints of an educational c...

We review work on the development of children and adolescents’ expectancy and competence beliefs for academic achievement domains across the elementary and secondary school years, and how they become calibrated to children's performance. The work reviewed stems from prominent achievement motivation theories: expectancy-value theory, social cognitiv...

In the present study, we examined the extent to which grit’s 2 components, consistency of interests and perseverance of effort, overlap with future-oriented motivation, relate to other motivational variables including self-efficacy, task values, and goal orientations, and predict achievement in high school students (N = 190) controlling for motivat...

Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly (2007) defined grit as one’s passion and perseverance toward long-term goals. They proposed that it consists of 2 components: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort. In a high school and college student sample, we used a multidimensional item response theory approach to examine (a) the factor st...

Many affirming and undermining motivations affect students as they read information texts, but few researchers have explored how these motivations are patterned within students. In this study we used cluster analysis to classify middle school students (n = 1,134) based on their patterns of self-efficacy, perceived difficulty, value, and devalue for...

One way to increase students’ participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is to target their motivation. Researchers have conducted a growing number of interventions addressing students’ motivation in STEM; however, this body of work has not been adequately reviewed. We systematically reviewed experimental and q...

The goal of the present studies was to examine whether students’ reasoning about the relation between levels of effort and ability is influenced by the perceived source of an individual’s effort. Two sources of others’ effort were examined: task-elicited effort, or effort due primarily to the subjective difficulty of the task, and self-initiated ef...

This study extends previous research on the long-term connections between motivation constructs in expectancy-value theory and achievement outcomes. Using growth mixture modelling, we examined trajectories of change for 421 students from 4th grade through college in their self-concept of ability (SCA) in math, interest in math, and perceived import...

In this chapter we review the research on the development of children's motivation and engagement. We organize our review into four major sections: the development of children's achievement motivation; gender, cultural, and ethnic differences in children's motivation; socialization of motivation in the family; and socialization of motivation in sch...

The authors examine two kinds of factors that affect students’ motivation to engage in critical-analytic thinking. The first, which includes ability beliefs, achievement values, and achievement goal orientations, influences the quantitative relation between motivation and critical-analytic thinking; that is, whether students are sufficiently motiva...

PurposeWe describe the development and various implementations of a reading comprehension instruction program called Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). CORI was designed to enhance students’ reading motivation and reading comprehension, and has been implemented at both elementary and middle school, with a particular focus on science infor...

This review of research examines the constructs of reading motivation and synthesizes research findings of the past 20 years on the relationship between reading motivation and reading behavior (amount, strategies, and preferences), and the relationship between reading motivation and reading competence (reading skills and comprehension). In addition...

In this chapter we discuss the nature of children's achievement motivation and how it develops over the school years. We focus on the competence-related belief, value, goal, interest, and intrinsic aspects of motivation that have been emphasized in much of the research on motivation. We then discuss how different aspects of classroom and school pra...

This study examined elementary school students’ perceived support for recreational reading from their mothers, fathers, and friends. Participants, including 130 fourth graders and 172 fifth graders, completed the researcher-developed Reading Support Survey, which assesses how often children experience and how greatly they enjoy multiple types of re...

In this chapter, we review research on students’ engagement in reading activities and how classroom instructional practices influence engagement in reading and other academic activities. We define engaged readers as motivated to read, strategic in their approaches to reading, knowledgeable in their construction of meaning from text, and socially in...

This article focuses on motivation during the middle and high school years. It begins with a presentation of current theories of achievement motivation, focusing on current social-cognitive and situative theories. How children's achievement motivation develops across the school years is discussed next, with a focus on the decline in motivation obse...

Expectancy-value theory is prominent in different areas in psychology, and a number of educational and developmental psychologists who study the development of achievement motivation have utilized this theory in their work (see Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2006; Weiner, 1992; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992; Wigfield, Tonks, & Klauda, 2009 for overviews). In...

Students’ achievement task values, goal orientations, and interest are motivation-related constructs which concern students’ purposes and reasons for doing achievement activities. The authors review the extant research on these constructs and describe and compare many of the most frequently used measures of these constructs. They also discuss their...

Motivational psychologists study what moves people to act and why people think and do what they do (Weiner, 1992). Motivation energizes and directs actions, and so it has great relevance to many important developmental outcomes such as school achievement, performance in other activity areas, and overall mental health. Fundamentally, motivational th...

Previous research has investigated motivations for reading by examining positive, or affirming, motivations including intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. Related to them, we examined two negative, or undermining, motivations consisting of avoidance and perceived difficulty. We proposed that the motivations of intrinsic motivation and avoidance...

The authors examined how motivational and cognitive variables predict reading comprehension, and whether each predictor variable adds unique explanatory power when statistically controlling for the others. Fourth-grade students (N=205) completed measures of reading comprehension in September and December of the same year, and measures of background...

Low-achieving readers in Grade 5 often lack comprehension strategies, domain knowledge, word recognition skills, fluency, and motivation to read. Students with such multiple reading needs seem likely to benefit from instruction that supports each of these reading processes. The authors tested this expectation experimentally by comparing the effects...

The authors examined how math track placement and gender affected 7th-grade students' self-esteem, self-concepts, and social comparisons. Participants were 170 students who completed surveys that assessed their self-esteem, academic self-concepts of ability, and the kinds of social comparisons they make. Results showed that higher track students ha...

We examined the development of children's self- and task perceptions during the elementary school years. 865 first-, second-, and fourth-grade children (ages 7–10) completed questionnaires assessing their perceptions of competence in, and valuing of, activities in several activity domains (math, reading, sports, and instrumental music). Factor anal...

The engagement model of reading development suggests that instruction improves students' reading comprehension to the extent that it increases students' engagement processes in reading. We compared how Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) (support for cognitive and motivational processes in reading), strategy instruction (support for cogniti...

We highlight major themes emerging from the articles in this special issue. These themes include (a) the importance of theoretical frameworks and clearly defined constructs for guiding the development of interventions, (b) a consideration of intervention effects on ethnic minority children, (c) the importance of positive social interactions and rel...

This article provides an introduction and overview to this special issue of Educational Psychologist, titled Promoting Motivation at School: Interventions That Work. This issue is devoted to the topic of interventions that emphasize different aspects of motivation for enhancing students' academic and social outcomes in school. The interventions ran...

Reading motivation has been viewed as a multifaceted construct with multiple constituents. Our investigation of motivational multiplicity expanded on previous literature by including motivation constructs (interest, perceived control, collaboration, involvement, and efficacy), text genres, specific versus general contexts, and the self-versus other...

Contributors. Preface. A. Wigfield and J.S. Eccles, Introduction. Part 1: Can I Do This Activity?. D.H. Schunk and F. Pajares, The Development of Academic Self-Efficacy. M.V. Covington and E. Dray, The Developmental Course of Achievement Motivation: A Need-Based Approach. C.S. Dweck, The Development of Ability Conceptions. Part 2: Do I Want to Do t...

The processes of change in children's reading motivation have not been widely studied. We investigated whether situated interest for a specific book may lead to longer‐term intrinsic motivation for general reading. Two schools with 120 grade 3 students filled out reading logs identifying their reasons for reading their favorite books twice. In addi...

One theoretical approach for increasing intrinsic motivation for reading consists of teachers using situational interest to encourage the development of long-term individual interest in reading. The authors investigated that possibility by using stimulating tasks, such as hands-on science observations and experiments, to increase situational intere...

In this chapter we discuss development during the early and middle adolescent years (approximately ages 10 to 20), updating the chapter on this topic from the first edition of this Handbook. Because this Handbook is for the educational psychology audience, we focus primarily on changes in adolescents' cognition and motivation, and how these changes...

Paul Pintrich's many contributions to educational psychology are discussed. This article describes Paul's academic career at the University of Michigan and discusses Paul's contributions to the understanding of students' achievement goal orientations, self-regulated learning, epistemological beliefs, and conceptual change and Paul's work on develop...

Individual differences in school performance and other achievement-related behaviors have been a central concern of social and personality theory for more than 50 years. Various theoretical analyses of these differences have been proposed, and a variety of beliefs and perceptions about self and task have been proposed as mediators of achievement-re...

This article discusses development during the early adolescent years with a focus on recent research on the biological, cognitive, self-identity, and motivational changes that occur during this time period and the implications of this research for middle school counselors. Peer influences on early adolescents also are discussed, with the issue of s...

Based on an engagement perspective of reading development, we investigated the extent to which an instructional framework of combining motivation support and strategy instruction (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction--CORI) influenced reading outcomes for third-grade children. In CORI, five motivational practices were integrated with six cognitive...

The authors discuss the nature and domain specificity of reading motivation and present initial results that examined how 2 reading instructional programs, Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) and multiple Strategy Instruction (SI), influenced 3rd-grade children's intrinsic motivation to read and reading self-efficacy. Each reading program o...

In this chapter the authors discuss the development of children's reading motivation and how motivation contributes to reading engagement. They consider aspects of motivation that may influence children's reading engagement. They review research on how these aspects of motivation develop during the elementary school years, and connect this research...

In this chapter, we focus on two major aspects of adolescent development: cognitive development and achievement/achievement motivation. First, we discuss cognitive development, pointing out the relevance of recent work for both learning and decision making. Most of the chapter focuses on achievement and achievement motivation. We summarize current...

William. James' (1892/1961) definition of self-esteem, the ratio of success over pretensions, has been the focus of much research and theory (e.g., Epstein, 1973, Harter, 1998; Marsh, 1994). Unfortunately research findings in support of James' ratio have been mixed, depending on the research methods applied. Two potential reasons for the mixed find...

This study was designed to examine how college women’s valuing of graduate education predicted their intentions to attend graduate school, using a new measure of the valuing of graduate school. A second purpose was to assess relations of college women’s perceptions of the relative importance of family and career to their valuing of graduate educati...

This chapter discusses the students' motivation during the middle school years. The early adolescent developmental period is one in which individuals experience many changes, including the biological changes associated with puberty, important changes in relations with family and peers, and the social and educational changes resulting from transitio...

This chapter reviews the research on the development of children's competence-expectancy beliefs and achievement values. The research is based on an expectancy-value model of achievement motivation and behavior developed by Eccles and her colleagues. Expectancy-value theory has been one of the most important views on the nature of achievement motiv...

Stability and change from middle childhood to middle adolescence in participants’perceptions of their friendship-making ability and their friends’ deviant behavior were examined. Third-grade, fourth-grade, and sixth-grade children completed questionnaires that assessed those constructs and did so again 5 years later. Participants perceived their fr...

This study extended previous research on changes in children's self-beliefs by documenting domain-specific growth trajectories for 761 children across grades 1 through 12 in a longitudinal study of perceptions of self-competence and task values. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to (1) describe changes in beliefs across childhood and adolescenc...

This chapter reviews the recent research on motivation, beliefs, values, and goals, focusing on developmental and educational psychology. The authors divide the chapter into four major sections: theories focused on expectancies for success (self-efficacy theory and control theory), theories focused on task value (theories focused on intrinsic motiv...

Changes in students' achievement values in mathematics and reading were examined in a sample of children and early adolescents. Hierarchical linear modeling techniques were used to account for both classroom- and student-level effects. At the student level, positive changes in students' achievement values were associated positively with self-concep...

What explains individual differences in academic achievement motivation? This article outlines the answer to question in terms of three basic questions students ask themselves: Can I succeed? Do I want to do this task? And, Why am I doing this task? To the extent that individuals have positive answers to each of these questions, they will be motiva...

The authors assessed age and gender variations in children's beliefs regarding the kinds of activities (academics, sports, music and arts) at which they thought they were best and worst. Children also reported the extent to which they thought they could improve their abilities in these different activities. The authors interviewed 865 first-, secon...

Effects of instructional context on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have been examined with a variety of studies. This quasi experiment compared students receiving an instructional intervention designed to increase intrinsic motivation with students receiving traditional instruction. Concept-oriented reading instruction (CORI) integrated reading...

We discuss the expectancy–value theory of motivation, focusing on an expectancy–value model developed and researched by Eccles, Wigfield, and their colleagues. Definitions of crucial constructs in the model, including ability beliefs, expectancies for success, and the components of subjective task values, are provided. These definitions are compare...

ABSTRACTS Dimensions of children's motivation for reading and their relations to reading activity and reading achievement This study was designed to assess dimensions of reading motivation and examine how these dimensions related to students' reading activity and achievement. A heterogeneous urban sample of fifth‐ and sixth‐grade children completed...