Teachers' Provision of Psychological Affordances Helps Explain When Students Enact Their Motivational Frameworks

• In Event: Motivated Students, Motivating Contexts: Building Clarity About the Nature and Mechanisms of Motivational Climate

Abstract

Objectives. Students may view their academic abilities as fixed (an entity theory of ability), or they may believe their abilities can be grown if they work hard and use effective strategies (an incremental theory; see Dweck, 2008). When students adopt an incremental theory, they tend to view effort positively, adopt learning goals, and make positive attributions for failures (see Dweck & Yeager, 2019; Molden & Dweck, 2006). Previous research indicates that students’ incremental motivational frameworks—their incremental theories of ability, in combination with the beliefs, goals, and attributions that accompany them—are associated with learning-oriented behavior and improved achievement (e.g., Gunderson et al., 2018; Park et al., 2016; Yeager et al., 2016). However, a growing body of research suggests that the effects of potentially-adaptive beliefs are heterogeneous and depend on context (e.g., Walton et al., 2021; Yeager et al., 2019, 2021). With this in mind, we address the following question: what contextual factors determine whether students act on their motivational frameworks?

Theoretical framework. We ground our approach in the theory of psychological affordances: the cues in an environment that signal to an individual that their beliefs are a legitimate and adaptive guide for behavior in the context (Gibson, 1977; Walton & Yeager, 2020). In the case of students’ motivational frameworks, teachers may play an important role in creating an affording classroom culture. Through their policies, practices, and language, teachers may communicate to students that their classroom is one in which students are encouraged (or discouraged) to enact an incremental motivational framework (e.g., Canning et al., 2019; Muenks et al., 2020; see Hecht et al., 2021).
Our hypothesis for the present research was that students’ incremental motivational frameworks would be more associated with learning-oriented behaviors in the context of a teacher who affords the incremental framework than a teacher who undermines this framework.

Method. In Study A, we analyzed data from 8,670 9th-grade students and 251 math teachers in a dataset that was representative of students in the United States. The study included surveys measuring students’ motivational frameworks and learning-oriented behavior in math, as well as their math teachers’ affordances. In Study B, we conducted a preregistered laboratory experiment with 803 adolescents from a nationally-representative panel. We measured students’ motivational frameworks and then asked them to report on their hypothetical learning-oriented behavior in the context of a teacher whose practices were manipulated to either afford or undermine the incremental framework (see Table 1 for measures).

Results. In Study A, students’ incremental motivational frameworks were more positively associated with their learning-oriented behavior when their math teacher provided more affordances for this motivational framework (Figure 3a). In Study B, students’ motivational frameworks significantly predicted their learning-oriented behaviors in the context of the affording teacher, but not the undermining teacher (Figures 3b-c).

Significance. These results highlight the critical role of context in students’ motivational processes and indicate that, through their policies and practices, teachers can create classroom environments in which students can profit from their adaptive motivational frameworks.

Authors

• Cameron Hecht, The University of Texas at Austin

• David Yeager, The University of Texas at Austin

• Mary C. Murphy, Indiana University

• Carol Dweck, Stanford University