Interest Development, Value, and Self-Relatedness

• In Event: How Do Expectancies and Values Affect Interest Development?

Abstract

In this presentation, interest is defined as a cognitive and affective motivational variable that develops through four phases in relation to developing knowledge and corresponding value (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Renninger & Hidi, 2020). Research indicates that learners in earlier phases of interest development typically need external support to trigger connections to the content of interest, whereas learners in later phases are likely to self-generate engagement by seeking further information. Two current projects provide additional insight. One reports the development and validation of the domain-general Interest Development Scale (IDS) for adult learners (Boeder, Postlewaite, Renninger, & Hidi, 2020). The second is a multi-method study of teacher professional development that demonstrates a relation between self-related information processing and phases in the development of interest (Renninger & Shumar, unpublished manuscript).

The IDS was developed and validated using the diverse Amazon Mechanical Turk participant group. In Study 1 (n = 348), five distinct underlying factors were identified for interest development: information seeking, motivation to re-engage, persistence, self-regulation, and value. Study 2 (n = 515) confirmed the factor structure identified in Study 1, examined convergent and discriminant validity of the items, and demonstrated that the scale is a reliable and valid measure of domain-general interest. Mixed methods undertaken in Study 3 (n = 103) indicated reliable differentiation of earlier and later phases of interest, and that motivation to re-engage showed differences among each of the phases. These findings underscore distinctions among phases, and suggest the importance of reengagement in the development of interest.

In the two studies of teacher professional development, we employed pre-post workshop surveys and in-depth interviews to address questions about teacher learning and motivation, and specifically to determine if we could predict participants’ subsequent engagement in the workshop. The first workshop studied was a three-week, mathematically-infused, summer enrichment residency (n = 47), and the second- a replication and extension- was an online and face-to-face professional development program to support the integration of computer science into mathematics (n = 67). Teachers’ purposes were operationalized as (a) their conception/understanding of the workshop content and (b) as well as their investment, or the self-relatedness of their reason. The teachers’ purposes correlated with their phase of interest for mathematics, and did predict engagement in the workshop (as well as their strengths and needs for support). We also found that the teachers who originally stated self-specific purposes, and had a increasingly accurate conceptualization of the workshop content were the ones who were likely to progress.

These findings suggest that interest development may be tied to self-related information processing. Findings from neuroscience have suggested that interest and self-related information processing overlap and activate the reward circuitry (Hidi et al, 2018, 2019). This overlap is the reason that interest development can be self-generated. It also explains why only certain triggers (self-related) support the development of interest, as well as why along with developing knowledge, individuals’ expectancies and value are related to interest development.

Authors

• K. Ann Renninger, Swarthmore College

• Suzanne E. Hidi, University of Toronto