What Are the Current Limitations and Future Directions in Contemporary Motivation Science in Education?

• In Event: Controversial Questions in Contemporary Motivation Science: Insights From the Leading Voices

Abstract

Objectives
Motivation science has its fair share of unanswered questions and unresolved controversies. Also, the future is unknowable, but current trends and emerging themes can be suggestive. In this presentation, two limitations and two directions for future development in motivation science are proposed.

Perspectives
The limitation starts with achievement goals. For the last several decades, achievement goal theorists have debated whether there are benefits when students focus on demonstrating their competence by outperforming others. The history of the debate and its current status will be discussed to explain why this controversy requires an urgent resolution (Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2012).
Another limitation is insufficient answers regarding the interaction of motivation with context. How does the meaning of motivational concepts change across contexts and cultures? Which motivational belief determines action in the given context (Bong et al., 2015)? Some contexts require a prolonged engagement with a single task. What predicts the persistent endeavor over multiple years endured by successful people?
If we turn our attention to the future, the first development will be the increasing effort among motivation scientists to represent the complexity of motivation as experienced by individuals. There is growing dissatisfaction with the ability of current approaches to capture the sophisticated nature of motivational phenomena. A complex and dynamic “systems view” toward motivation will provide a coherent epistemological framework to reconcile false dichotomies that have plagued motivation science (Kaplan & Garner, 2020).
The second and biggest shift in motivation science will involve an increased focus on community-engaged research methodologies (Gray et al., 2020). Motivation science has maintained the implicit distance between researcher and participant as an acceptable, valid, and correct way of gaining research-based insights. However, this distance has contributed to the need to “translate” scholarship from theory to practice. Community-engaged research ensures that our research efforts are inclusive of participants, contextually based, and thus inherently relevant to the educational communities we seek to impact.

Summary
Among many unresolved controversies and unanswered questions, two are discussed as limitations that hinder further progress of motivation science in education. The first controversy is selected as an example of a theory-specific dispute that has been discussed in the past with no satisfactory resolution; the second controversy is selected to show the kinds of questions motivation science needs to ask more of.
The future of motivation science is predicted to witness two developments: the complex and dynamic systems view toward motivation and community-engaged research. Both require fundamental changes in how we do research if we were to accomplish the very purpose of motivation science in education—to help real students in real classrooms to become motivated.

Significance
Discussion of the unanswered questions will help the audience to realize the scope and nature of current limitations and help them understand why these controversies deserve attention for motivation science to move forward. The future of motivation science as the last controversy of the session will help generate healthy dialogue among the presenters and audience about the directions that the field needs to take for further growth.

Authors

• Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia, Michigan State University

• Mimi Bong, Korea University

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University

• DeLeon Gray, Black and Belonging