Motivation, Achievement, and Situated Expectancy-Value Theory

How do young people determine what activities they value--and are good at? What motivates an individual to choose a particular career? What key factors should be addressed in interventions to enhance academic engagement? This book offers the first comprehensive presentation of situated expectancy–value theory (SEVT), a multidimensional model that has guided research into motivation and achievement for over 40 years. SEVT originators Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Allan Wigfield are joined by leading SEVT proponents to describe the model's development and unpack its constituent parts. They reflect on how their long and productive collaboration took shape; discuss lessons learned about the individual, family, school, and sociocultural factors that shape motivation; review cutting-edge methodological developments and intervention studies; and provide a vital blueprint for future SEVT research.

Jacquelynne S. Eccles, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and the McKeachie–Pintrich Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on achievement, motivation, personal and social identities, gender, and the influence of family and school on student motivation. Dr. Eccles is past president of Divisions 7 (Developmental Psychology) and 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women) of the American Psychological Association and of the Society for Research on Adolescence. An elected member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Science, she is the recipient of honors including five lifetime achievement awards and three honorary doctorates from Canadian and European universities.

Allan Wigfield, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. He has held honorary or guest professorships at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Tübingen in Germany, as well as Korea University in South Korea. Dr. Wigfield has conducted numerous studies of the development of motivation during childhood and adolescence and of interventions to improve motivation in STEM fields and in reading. Widely published, he is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science; an elected member of the National Academy of Education; and a recipient of numerous research awards.

Sandra D. Simpkins, PhD, is Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and Director of its Center for Afterschool and Summer Excellence. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, she conducts research on positive youth developmental processes, the influence of families and organized activities on youth development, and how these processes vary by social-position factors (such as ethnicity and gender). Dr. Simpkins’s current projects focus on how organized afterschool activities support youths' positive adjustment into adulthood and how families help support adolescents’ STEM motivation, activities, and choices.

Fani Lauermann, PhD, is Professor of Empirical Educational Research and Educational Psychology at the University of Bonn, Germany, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Psychology. She is also an Associated Researcher at the Center for Research on Education and School Development at TU Dortmund University and a Research Affiliate with the Gender and Achievement Research Program at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Lauermann’s research examines the development of teacher and student motivation in context, with emphases on STEM and gateway mathematics, teachers’ professional responsibility and competence beliefs, instructional decision making, and teacher–student interactions.