A Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective on Identity, Motivation, and Situated Action

• In Event: Identity, Motivation, and Situated Action in Educational Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
Motivation theories describe processes that give rise to a person’s specific behavior such as making a particular choice, investing effort at a particular moment, or using a particular learning strategy in a learning situation (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). However, motivation research has rarely focused on specific individuals’ behaviors. Instead, the vast majority of motivation research has focused on identifying replicable associations between motivational constructs and classes of actions, while aggregating across individuals, contexts, and situations. Whereas such research may offer clues to general motivational patterns in the population, it masks essential features of the motivational processes underlying the dynamic unfolding of situated individuals’ decisions and actions (Nolen, Horn, & Ward, 2015). Research that targets motivational processes undergirding individuals’ situated actions call for different epistemological assumptions and methodological practices than those common in motivational research.

The goals of this introductory presentation are to (1) introduce the difference between research seeking probabilistic motivation-action patterns and research seeking to understand individuals’ motivated situated actions and the implications to epistemology and methodology; (2) introduce a Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS) perspective on identity, motivation, and situated actions, and the CDS model that serves as the theoretical framework for the empirical studies in the symposium—the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017); and (3) introduce the symposium’s purpose and structure, and the empirical presentations.

Theoretical Framework
The CDS perspective harbors epistemological assumptions that correspond with an emphasis on situated action: it understands phenomena as emerging continuously from the dynamic and interdependent interplay of the numerous elements of the system within the confluence of contextual control parameters (Koopmans & Stamovlasis, 2016). The studies in the current symposium are framed by the DSMRI—a CDS model of identity, motivation, and action that integrates constructs from diverse contemporary motivational theories (Kaplan & Garner, 2017). The DSMRI conceptualizes an agent’s situated action as based in their situated role-identity (e.g., student, teacher) and as emerging from the dynamic interplay of elements from four categories of constructs: ontological and epistemological beliefs (e.g., attributions), purpose and goals (e.g., achievement goals), self-perceptions and self-definitions (e.g., self-efficacy, task value, social identities), and the perceived action possibilities for pursuing the goals in light of the situated beliefs and self-perceptions and definitions. The model further conceptualizes the various elements and their relations to emerge within the contextual control parameters of cultural mediating means, social positioning and interactions, personal dispositions, and content domain.


Scholarly significance
Motivation research over the past several decades has identified a host of constructs and their nomological relations with certain classes of behaviors (e.g., choice, investment of effort, persistence, self-regulated learning strategies). However, only very little research has attended to a core of motivational phenomena: the contextualized and dynamic processes that undergird the unfolding of a person’s situated action. Motivational research in education needs to turn its attention to investigating the motivational processes underlying individuals’ situated actions in authentic educational contexts. The current symposium advances the field of motivation research by providing a framework and exemplars for such investigations.

Author

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University