Allan Wigfield

University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park · Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology

This tribute celebrates the unwavering dedication and contributions of Dale H. Schunk to educational psychology. His research has fundamentally transformed how school-based practitioners support student learning. By pioneering effective teaching strategies and interventions, he has called educators to create dynamic learning environments that culti...

The thesis of this special issue is that the siloing of research on human motivation is impeding the field’s overall progress in understanding it. Herein, we describe three important kinds of silos: (a) silos across different subdisciplines of psychology that occur due to different journals and conferences that service each; (b) construct-based sil...

To address the seven guiding questions posed for authors of articles in this special issue, we begin by discussing the development (in the late 1970s-early 1980s) of Eccles’ expectancy-value theory of achievement choice (EEVT), a theory developed to explain the cultural phenomenon of why girls were less likely to participate in STEM courses and car...

The authors take first steps in racializing Eccles and Wigfield’s situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT). SEVT was initially developed to explain gender differences in motivation for and choice of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and careers but has been mostly silent on issues of race and racism in motivation research. Thu...

In this commentary, the author honors the three phases of Carol Dweck’s career (attributions and learned helplessness, goal theory, and mindsets) as well as her efforts to make motivation the centerpiece of psychology again. He also notes her theoretical papers that integrate different areas of psychology to break down the rigid boundaries between...

The “remembered success effect” (Finn, 2010) refers to the finding that challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success are preferred to challenging tasks that do not include these opportunities. Work on remembered success has primarily been done with adults. We assessed (in a preregistered study) whether the remem...

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...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

In this article, we reflect on our long-standing collaboration that has focused on understanding the development of motivational beliefs, motivated behaviors, and engagement and their relation to different outcomes. We begin with our individual biographies and how we came to work together. Next, we discuss the ways in which Eccles, Wigfield, and th...

We respond to the commentators (Harackiewicz and Asher, Elliot, Van Yperin and Den Hartigh) on our Legacy article on situated expectancy-value theory. We begin by thanking each for the positive things they said about our theoretical and empirical work. We then respond to some of the critiques raised by Elliot and also Van Yperin and Den Hartigh, no...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

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...

We conclude this special issue with our perspective on theoretical convergences and distinctions among the theories included in the special issue; how the theory article authors answered our questions on diversity, methodology, and motivation interventions; and sense of how the motivation field has advanced over the last 20 years. The convergences...

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...

The present research examined the joint effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons on students’ academic self-concepts and parents’ beliefs about their children’s competencies during students’ transition phase from elementary school to junior high school. To this end, we tested the newly developed 2I/E model using longitudinal data in...

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...

In aim to explain and address the weak grit-achievement association issue, this study argued that to find a strong grit effect on achievement a highly committed goal in that achievement domain has to be considered simultaneously. Drew a longitudinal sample that including about 550 students in both time waves (8th and 9th grade), we examined the sta...

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regula...

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...

Grit—individuals’ perseverance of effort and consistency of interests—was introduced in 2007 as new construct that predicts different achievement outcomes. To date, most studies examining grit's prediction of achievement have not included other predictors in their analyses. Therefore, we assessed grit's incremental validity for school achievement a...

In the present study, we investigated how students’ expectancies and values can be predicted by their achievements in multiple domains. Our major aim was to extend previous findings on dimensional comparison processes for expectancies to task values while systematically comparing multiple value facets defined in expectancy-value theory. We assessed...

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...

Relations between 8th and 10th grade students’ perceptions of classroom goal structures, task values, anxiety, help-seeking behavior, and effort in mathematics classes were examined. The authors investigated whether the associations between perceived goal structures and anxiety, help-seeking behavior, and effort are mediated through students’ perce...

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...

In this article, we review research on children's motivation to read and its relation to their reading comprehension. We begin by discussing work on the development of school motivation in general and reading motivation in particular, reviewing studies showing that many children's motivation to read declines over the school years. Motivation to rea...

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...

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...

Little is known about how pre- and peri-adoption therapy affects the adoptive placements of children who have been in foster care. This pilot study was designed to begin to provide information about such effects. The participants in this study included 13 children who, prior to the intervention, were at various stages in the process of implementing...

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...