The Co-Development of Motivation and Identity: Troubling the Concepts of "Disengaged" and "Unmotivated"

• In Event: Unpacking Situated Perspectives on Identity, Engagement, and Motivation: Implications for Designing Equitable Learning Environments

Abstract

Purpose
Recent research highlights the role of identity processes and power in productive disciplinary engagement, leaving questions about how to understand motivation in learning environments (e.g. Agarwal & Sengupta-Irvin, 2019). The present study examines the co-development of motivation and identities for youth during the secondary school years in order to better understand the experiences of youth described as “disengaged” and “unmotivated”.

Theoretical framework
We applied the situative perspective on motivation here. Accordingly, learners-in-context and groups-in-context are the unit of analysis (Nolen et al., 2015). Situative motivation theory emphasizes identities and histories’ roles in motivation and draws upon Vygotskyan and neo-Vygotskyan views in which sociogenesis is the primary mechanism to explain psychological phenomena (Author, 2015; Bang, 2015; Nolen, 2020).

Methods & Data Sources
A multiple case study methodology was employed with two cases (Yin, 2003). Case 1 involved videorecorded observational data for a group-in-context with a single context of analysis, a 7th grade inquiry-based science classroom. Case 2 involved ethnographic observations and interviews with a learner-in-context across multiple contexts, inside and outside of classes at an alternative high school focused on environmental leadership.

Results
Case 1 involved a group member rejoining his group after receiving the teacher’s help. The group was divided and two members were positioned as non-contributors and unserious about science class, with mocking and dismissiveness toward the two’s questions. This escalated to a revision of the task instructions to justify excluding the two students. The two positioned as non-contributors further disengaged. For these two, reengaging was complicated by groupmates punishing perceived insufficient motivation and engagement, leaving questions about how their prior histories of participation had been constructed.

Case 2 involved DJ who negotiated in-school and out-of-school identities. As a star leader and an ambassador for the school, DJ had motivations situated in his identity at his new school. In contrast, outside of school DJ spent time with his friends from his old school, smoking weed, drinking alcohol, and stealing. As part of his identity development, DJ negotiated the contradictions and differing motivations he saw in his life: he could not just take on a new identity and abandon the old one. Rather had to negotiate how those identities fit with the entirety of his life, including contradictions that existed between his new identity and his old friends and routines.

Significance
The case study findings presented here indicated that students were constructed as lacking motivation by their teachers and peers, with students’ forms of engagement being treated as an indicator of whether they were sufficiently motivated. As these students negotiated both their peer group and academic identities, they received limited support for reconciling their identities when they conflicted. Perceptions of disengagement and poor motivation then informed later interactions with teachers and peers, with implications for opportunities to learn and chances to receive positive evaluations of one’s own competence. Behaviors deemed “off-task” and “self-destructive” can play a role in youths’ identity construction and in turn afford or constrain learners’ motivations and forms of participation.

Note: Equal contribution by authors

Authors

• Karlyn R. Adams-Wiggins, Portland State University

• Gavin Tierney, California State University - Fullerton