A Complexity Perspective on Culture, Identity, and Motivation: The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity

• In Event: Sociocultural Origins and Processes of Student Motivation: Advancing Theory, Informing Research, and Transforming Practice

Abstract

Objectives. This paper presents the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017) and the sociocultural processes that frame the emergence of role identities and motivated action. The DSMRI addresses the foundational motivational question: Why does a student act the way they do? In comparison to research that focuses on motivational constructs (e.g., self-efficacy, achievement goals, task value), the DSMRI focuses on explaining people’s experiences and motivated actions in their lived sociocultural contexts.

Theoretical Framework. The DSMRI is a complex dynamic systems (CDS) model that conceptualizes motivated action as based in the person’s role identity—their interpretation of who they are in a situated sociocultural role (e.g., math student, daughter) within a particular cultural activity system (e.g., math class, family dinner). It conceptualizes the role identity as a complex system that includes the co-action of elements from four categories: (a) a mental model of the world (ontological and epistemological beliefs), (b) purpose and goals, (c) self-perceptions and self-definitions, and (d) perceived action possibilities. This role identity system emerges continuously within the control parameters that comprise people’s dispositions and features of their lived sociocultural contexts. As a CDS, role identity and motivated actions are dynamic, non-linear, contextualized, dependent on systemic initial conditions, and holistic—it is irreducible to its distinct elements.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources. To explicate the sociocultural processes framing the emergence of role identities and motivated action, this paper synthesizes theoretical insights from four theoretical perspectives: Personal Investment Theory (Maehr & Braskamp, 1986), symbolic interactionism (Burke & Stets, 2023), Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2015), and perspectives on culture as a CDS (Strauss & Quinn, 1997).

Results or Substantiated Conclusions. Shared and complementary emphases from the four sociocultural perspectives converge on a conception of culture as a complex dynamic human activity system that reflects the continuous, mutual, co-constructive emergence of social structures and individuals’ agency. The elements of the cultural activity CDS that give rise to role identities and motivated action include its shared cultural purpose, the community and distribution of roles for pursuing that purpose, the norms and rules for participation in the activity by people occupying different roles, and the cultural-historical symbolic mediating means by which people participate in the activity. We present two examples illustrating the use of this conception of culture in two DSMRI studies that investigated role identities and motivated actions of learners in two different cultural activity CDSs: (1) educator in a professional development program, and (2) visitors in a hands-on museum exhibition.

Scholarly Significance. The DSMRI offers a comprehensive, culturally grounded, and complexity-informed framework for understanding student motivation. By conceptualizing the identity–motivation system as a CDS embedded within broader cultural activity, the DSMRI helps resolve longstanding dichotomies in motivation research—such as cultural vs. personal, cognitive vs. emotional, individual vs. social, and conscious vs. unconscious. It advances theoretical coherence and offers methodological tools and insights for investigating how students’ motivation and achievement emerge from the dynamic interplay of culturally situated identities, roles, and sociocultural contexts.

Authors

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University

• Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University