Akane Zusho

• In Event: Researching Race and Ethnicity in the Study of Learning and Motivation in Social and Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Akane Zusho, is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Fordham University. Her research focuses on examining the intersection of culture, achievement motivation, and self-regulation. The overarching goal of her research is to develop informed, less prescriptive, culturally sensitive theories of motivation and self-regulated learning that take into consideration the academic and motivational processes of urban youth from diverse backgrounds. Her empirical work to date has focused on populations both within and outside of the U.S., including Asian American bicultural college students, Latina high school students, immigrant Carribbean middle school students, as well as student populations in Jamaica and Nigeria. She is also the co-author of the article, “Culturalizing achievement goal theory and research”, published in Educational Psychologist in 2011. In this article, she argues that much of the research in the field of educational psychology in general, and achievement motivation in particular has not fully considered issues of culture. She also argues that a universalist approach to culture is most closely aligned with a motivational science perspective and should therefore serve to advance theory and research on motivation. More specifically, she argues that the cultural validity of motivational research can be enhanced with the improved operationalization of culture, the integration of motivational frameworks, and the development of a comprehensive, theoretically informed, instrument of motivation.

Author

• Akane Zusho, Fordham University