Hanna Gaspard

TU Dortmund University | TUD · Center for Research on Education and School Development

Expectancy-value theory (Eccles, 2009) posits that students’ relative expectancies and values across domains inform their academic choices. Students should therefore be more likely to choose a STEM major if they have higher expectancies and values in STEM domains compared with other domains. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore how upper second...

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...

Teachers can transmit their class-related values to their students and thus affect their students’ academic development in regular classes. This so-called value transmission has mostly been examined with respect to emotional contagion, that is, the transmission of rather affective values (e.g., enjoyment) from teachers to their students through tea...

Teacher enthusiasm and student engagement are often interrelated and have important implications for student learning and students' and teachers' well-being. However, results on the lesson-specific variation of teachers' and students' affective-motivational experiences and their interplay are scarce. This study investigated variation in teacher ent...

Relevance interventions have shown a great potential to foster motivation and achievement (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016). Yet, further research is warranted to test how such interventions can be successfully implemented in practice. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in ninth-grade mathematics classrooms to test the effectiveness of a relevance i...

Background: Achievement goals and self-efficacy are key components of teacher motivation and crucial for teaching quality and student outcomes, yet the processes explaining why they lead to specific teaching behaviors remain unclear. This study disentangles teacher goals on three levels (personal goals, student-oriented goals, intended classroom go...

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...

Die 22. Ausgabe der IFS-Jahrbuchreihe befasst sich mit dem Thema »Multiperspektivität von Unterrichtsprozessen«. Die neun Beiträge betrachten die Perspektiven der Lernenden (z. B. Studien zur Entwicklung von Leistungsmotivation, gender-spezifischen Entwicklungsverläufen), der Lehrenden (z. B. Studien zum Training und Entwicklung beruflicher Kompete...

Prior research has shown that brief motivation interventions, such as interventions targeting students’ perceptions concerning relevance of the learning material, can have long-lasting effects on students’ motivation and performance. However, the educational contexts in which these interventions have been implemented have their own motivational aff...

According to the internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model (Marsh, 1986), individuals’ academic self-concept is strongly influenced by comparing their achievement in one domain with their achievement in other domains and with the achievement of others. Research has typically found contrast effects such that high-achieving others have a negat...

Randomisierte kontrollierte Feldstudien dienen der Überprüfung der Wirksamkeit von pädagogischen Interventionen in realen Lernkontexten und werden in der Bildungsforschung oftmals als „Goldstandard“ bezeichnet. In diesem Kapitel werden Designmerkmale und Qualitätskriterien vorgestellt, die wesentlich zur Aussagekraft solcher Studien beitragen, und...

In their recently renamed theory, Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT), Eccles and Wigfield (2020) emphasized the importance of situations in influencing individuals’ motivational beliefs and academic choices. Adopting a novel approach—network analysis, this study aimed to examine how situations may impact the associations among expectancies, su...

Zusammenfassung Die Motivationsforschung zeigt konsistent eine Abnahme der Motivation mit zunehmendem Alter sowie Geschlechterunterschiede in der Motivation für verschiedene Schulfächer. Weniger erforscht wurde bislang, wie solche Unterschiede mit der besuchten Schulform zusammenhängen. In dieser Studie wurde daher Heterogenität in Fähigkeitsselbst...

Colleges and universities have increasingly worried in recent decades about college students’ well-being, with the COVID-19 pandemic aggravating these concerns. Our study examines changes to undergraduate emotional sentiments and psychological well-being from before to after the onset of the pandemic. In addition, we explore whether certain risk fa...

Emerging evidence suggests interventions can improve childhood self-regulation. One intervention approach that has shown promise is Taekwondo martial arts instruction, though little is known about its acceptability among stakeholders or its mechanisms of effect. We extend evidence on Taekwondo interventions in three ways: (a) testing the efficacy o...

Many students suffer from motivational problems when doing homework. To investigate whether an intervention that effectively promoted value beliefs in mathematics promoted students’ homework motivation and behavior, we analyzed data from a cluster randomized controlled study with two classroom-based relevance interventions (writing a text or evalua...

In their situated expectancy-value theory, Eccles and Wigfield (2020) assume students’ competence and value beliefs to be situation-specific and thereby to be “situative” in nature. Even though motivation research has gradually been developing an understanding of this situative nature, for instance, by disentangling time-consistent and fluctuating...

Teaching quality is a key factor in student academic success, but few studies have investigated how teaching quality changes at the beginning of secondary education and how such changes are predicted by dimensions of teacher motivation. This study investigated the changes in class-level student perceptions of teaching quality over one school year a...

Colleges and universities have increasingly worried in recent decades about college students’ wellbeing, with the COVID-19 pandemic aggravating these concerns. Our study provides empirical evidence of changes to undergraduate emotional sentiments and psychological wellbeing from before to after the onset of the pandemic. In addition, we explore whe...

In den vergangenen Jahren wurden zahlreiche Motivationsinterventionen entwickelt und auf ihre Wirksamkeit in der Förderung der Schülerinnen- und Schülermotivation überprüft. Dabei ist eine offene Frage, ob eine Motivationsintervention in Abhängigkeit motivationaler Unterrichtspraktiken im Regelunterricht in jeder Klasse gleichermaßen wirksam ist. D...

In den vergangenen Jahren wurden zahlreiche Motivationsinterventionen entwickelt und auf ihre Wirksamkeit in der Förderung der Schülerinnen- und Schülermotivation überprüft. Dabei ist eine offene Frage, ob eine Motivationsintervention in Abhängigkeit motivationaler Unterrichtspraktiken im Regelunterricht in jeder Klasse gleichermaßen wirksam ist. D...

A growing body of research suggests that utility-value interventions can promote students’ academic motivation and achievement. Moreover, there is evidence that minimal interventions are particularly useful for ethnic minority and first-generation students at college. Whether this is also the case with high school students belonging to minorities a...

Career choice is an important challenge in adolescence. Relevance interventions may be an option for promoting career choices because students reflect on the usefulness of the learning content for their future careers. We investigated whether a relevance intervention focusing on the usefulness of math for students' lives and careers could promote s...

The promotion of an adequate understanding of science is a central goal of science education, even in elementary school. In this study, we analyzed the effects of a recently developed science intervention program aimed at fostering the understanding of science as well as the motivation of elementary school–aged boys and girls. In prior research, th...

In their situated expectancy-value theory, Eccles et al. (2020) assume students’ competence and value beliefs to be situation-specific and thereby to be “situative” in nature. Even though motivation research has gradually been developing an understanding of this situative nature, for instance, by disentangling time-consistent and fluctuating propor...

Drawing upon expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983), we aimed to test the cross-cultural validity of scales for assessing adolescent students' values and costs in Germany, China, and Korea with a focus on gender and age differences and the potential cross-cultural generalizability of the structural relations. In each country (N = 483 in Germ...

Why do some students benefit from interventions and others do not? By investigating the antecedents and effects of students’ responsiveness to a classroom-based motivation intervention, the current study aims to shed light on the intervention processes that make educational interventions in real-life settings work. Using data from a cluster-randomi...

Relevance interventions have shown a great potential to foster motivation and achievement (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016). Yet, further research is warranted to test how such interventions can be successfully implemented in practice. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in ninth-grade mathematics classrooms to test the effectiveness of a relevance i...

Teachers can transmit their class-related values to their students and thus affect their students’ academic development in regular classes. This so-called value transmission has mostly been examined with respect to emotional contagion, that is, the transmission of rather affective values (e.g., enjoyment) from teachers to their students through tea...

Die Diagnostik und Förderung von Motivation und Volition im Schulkontext wird im Überblick behandelt. Motivation und Volition spielen eine entscheidende Rolle für schulisches Lernen und Bildungsverläufe. Zudem ist eines der Ziele schulischer Bildung, eine hohe Lernmotivation zu fördern bzw. aufrechtzuerhalten. Ansätzen zur Diagnostik und Förderung...

Conscientiousness and interest are well-known predictors of academic effort and achievement. As hypothesized by the Conscientiousness × Interest Compensation (CONIC) model, conscientiousness and interest can (partly) compensate for each other, leading to (comparatively) high effort if either conscientiousness or interest is high. The present resear...

This study proposed an improved representation of the factor structure of the Gaspard et al. (2015) value beliefs about math scale relying on bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (B-ESEM). Using a convenience sample of 537 Italian students (327 males; M age = 18.2), our results supported the superiority of a B-ESEM solution including n...

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...

Television programs are a central part of children's everyday lives. These programs often transmit stereotypes about gender roles such as “math is for boys and not for girls.” So far, however, it is unclear whether stereotypes that are embedded in television programs affect girls' and boys' performance, motivational dispositions, or attitudes. On t...

Adolescents’ motivation is crucial for their transition from school to further education. Parents are known to have a substantial influence on their children’s motivational beliefs through their own beliefs and behaviors. In this study, we tested whether a parent-based utility-value intervention could promote parents’ and students’ motivational bel...

In the context of learning, cost has mostly been discussed under the expectancy-value framework and defined as the perceived negative consequences of task engagement. The issue of cost has recently attracted growing interest among scholars, because it may provide insights regarding how to predict students’ avoidance motivation and behavior. In the...

Interest is important for successful student learning, but little is known about the developmental dynamics between interest and social support in classrooms. Based on the stage-environment fit theory, this study investigated the interrelation of developmental changes in student class-level interest and perceived teacher support in mathematics clas...

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...

The present study investigated the effectiveness of two short relevance interventions (writing a text or evaluating quotations about the utility of mathematics) using a sample of 1,916 students in 82 math classrooms in a cluster randomized controlled experiment. Short-term and sustained effects (6 weeks and 5 months after the intervention) of the t...

Using a cluster randomized field trial, the present study tested whether 2 relevance interventions affected students’ value beliefs, self-concept, and effort in math differently depending on family background (socioeconomic status, family interest (FI), and parental utility value). Eighty-two classrooms were randomly assigned to either 1 of 2 inter...

An emerging literature demonstrates that relevance interventions – which ask students to produce written reflections on how what they are learning relates to their lives – improve student learning outcomes. As part of a randomized evaluation of a relevance intervention (N = 1,978 students from 82 ninth-grade classes), we used Complier Average Causa...

Using data from 1,571 ninth-grade students (Mage = 14.62) from 82 academic track schools in Germany and their predominantly Caucasian middle-class parents, configurations of different family characteristics reported by parents were investigated. Latent profile analyses considering academic involvement, family interest, parents’ self-concept, child'...

Students’ value beliefs tend to decrease across secondary school (Wigfield et al., 2015). However, previous studies did not differentiate between all the dimensions of task values defined by expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983). Therefore, this study evaluated an instrument for assessing multiple value dimensions across grade level and aca...

One way to address the leaking pipeline toward STEM-related careers (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is to intervene on students’ STEM motivation in school. However, a neglected question in intervention research is how such interventions affect motivation in subjects not targeted by the intervention. This question was addre...

Drawing on expectancy-value theory, the present study examined the unique contributions of the four major value beliefs and self-concept on achievement, self-reported effort, and teacher-rated behavioral engagement in mathematics. In particular, we examined the multiplicative effects of self-concept and task values on educational outcomes using the...

Interventions targeting students' perceived relevance of the learning content have been shown to effectively promote student motivation within science classes (e.g., Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009). Yet, further research is warranted to understand better how such interventions should be designed in order to be successfully implemented in the classro...

Students’ value beliefs for subjects such as mathematics are important predictors for their course and career choices (Wigfield, Tonks, & Klauda, 2009). Fostering students’ value beliefs for mathematics in school is one way to address the leaking pipeline towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) because mathematics can be se...

Expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983) is a prominent approach to explaining gender differences in math-related academic choices, with value beliefs acting as an important explanatory factor. Expectancy-value theory defines 4 value components: intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and cost. The present study followed up on incons...

The lack of secondary school students’ motivation in mathematics lessons poses a great challenge. According to the Expectancy-Value Model (Eccles et al., Achievement and achievement motives: psychological and sociological approaches, New York, Freeman, S. 75–146, 1983), teacher and classmates influence students’ value beliefs. Using data of 1868 ni...

In this study we examined whether developmental changes in using verbal self-cueing for task-goal maintenance are dependent on the amount of task practice and task-sequencing demands. To measure task-goal maintenance we applied a switching paradigm in which children either performed only task A or B in single-task blocks or switched between them on...