Social policy, educational opportunity, and classroom practice: a co-regulation approach to research on student motivation and achievement

Abstract

Bruner (1985) once challenged learning theorists to define their model of the learner rather than design curriculum and instruction materials directed at a vague, and perhaps nonexistent, target. We suggest that motivation theorists do the same. The model of co-regulated learning that we describe (McCaslin, 2009) first posits learners who: (1) are social by nature (biological adaptations) and by nurture (socialization) (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Geary, 2002; Olson & McCaslin, 2008); (2) have basic needs for participation and validation that can inform student dispositions toward school (McCaslin & Burross, 2008); and (3) differ in how and in what they participate – their adaptation (McCaslin & Burross, in press, p. xx). Second, the co-regulation model of the learner asserts that motivation and identity are mutually informative; what I am and am not willing to do inform who I am and the person I might become. Both motivation and identity are based on opportunities denied, taken, or missed and on the interpersonal relationships that do or do not support and validate them. Opportunities and relationships are based, in part, on cultural norms and challenges that delineate individuals historically and presently in time and place (see McCaslin, 2009 for full explication of these and related constructs). Motivation is at the core of identity. Thus, motivations of today's learners inform not only their school achievements, but also the adults they may become. If motivation is the core of emergent identity now and in the future, what then is at the core of motivation?

Citation

McCaslin, M. and Leah Lavigne, A. (2010), "Social policy, educational opportunity, and classroom practice: a co-regulation approach to research on student motivation and achievement", Urdan, T.C. and Karabenick, S.A. (Ed.) The Decade Ahead: Applications and Contexts of Motivation and Achievement (Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 16 Part B), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 211-249. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0749-7423(2010)000016B010