Integrating Identity and Motivation: The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity

• In Event: The Interplay of Motivation and Identity: Perspectives on How It Matters for Students and Teachers

Abstract

While the scientific fields of identity and motivation have developed mostly in parallel (Kaplan & Flum, 2009), their respective foci – who a person is and why they do what they do – are integrated in people’s phenomenological experiences and actions. Here, we describe the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017) – a meta-theoretical framework that integrates identity and motivation theories to explain how a person’s identity frames why they do what they do, and how actions promote identity change. After introducing the DSMRI, we describe several projects that use the DSMRI to investigate and promote adaptive identity and motivation processes among people in different formal and informal educational settings.
The DSMRI integrates psychosocial, social-cognitive, social-psychological, and social-cultural theories of identity and motivation to explain people’s motivated action as based in the social-cultural role that the person occupies at the time of action. These social-cultural roles can be formal (e.g., math teacher, engineering student, proposal reviewer) or informal (e.g., friend, pedestrian, customer). Each person construes a personal interpretation of who they are in the role—their role identity—which frames their experiences, decision-making, and actions. The DSMRI depicts role identity as a complex dynamic system that integrates constructs and mechanisms from several identity and motivational theories. The role identity system, depicted in Figure 1, comprises elements from four interdependent components that co-act to give rise to the person’s meaning making, experiences, and motivated action while occupying the role: (1) Ontological and Epistemological Beliefs (a mental model of reality that includes causal attributions), (2) Purpose and Goals in the role (e.g., achievement and social goals for self and others), (3) Self-Perceptions and Self-Definitions (e.g., perceived competencies, personal values, and social identity characteristics), and (4) Perceived Action Possibilities (e.g., strategies and tactics). The basic premise of the DSMRI is that a person’s actions are selected from the action possibilities perceived to be available for that person for pursuing their goals in light of their ontological and epistemological beliefs about the context and about themselves within that context. The elements in the four components, their relations, and their related emotions emerge continuously within the unfolding activity system that is frame by four control parameters: the cultural physical context and tangible and semiotic mediating means, social positioning and interactions, the person’s dispositions, and the role’s domain (e.g., home, school). The person’s hierarchical system of role identities and their relations, including past, current, and future-imagined role identities, constitute the individual’s psychosocial identity.
The DSMRI has been serving as a theoretical and analytical framework in research on identity and motivation processes of teachers, students, principals, counselors, education policymakers, and museum visitors (Kaplan et al., 2021). For illustration, we will describe two intervention projects: a research-practice partnership in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to design an exhibition that promotes diverse visitors’ role identity exploration and motivation around inventiveness, and a design-based research project on social studies teacher professional development to support teachers’ role identity and motivation to facilitate student-centered discussions.

Authors

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University

• Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University