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Given the complexity of societal, technological, and economic challenges encountered by schools and teachers, one may wonder whether and how teachers can still optimally motivate their students. To adopt a motivating role in today’s ever-changing, even stormy, educational landscape, teachers need more than a checklist of motivating practices. They also need a fundamental theoretical perspective that can serve as a general source of inspiration for their everyday classroom practices across various situations and in interaction with different students. Herein, we argue that self-determination theory represents such a valuable perspective. In Part I, we discuss the satisfaction of learners’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as a source of student motivation, engagement, and resilience. We also present a recently developed circular model involving a broad variety of motivating (i.e., need-supportive) and demotivating (i.e., need-thwarting) teaching practices appealing to these three needs. In Part II, we discuss several implications of this circular model, thereby discussing the diverse pathways that lead to student need satisfaction, motivation, and engagement as well as highlighting teachers’ capacity for calibration to deal with uncertainty and change. We conclude that school principals and teachers do well to invest in both students’ and teachers’ psychological need experiences, such that they become skilled in flexibly adjusting themselves to diversity, uncertainty, and change.

At the core of SDT is the postulation of three basic psychological needs, that is, the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these three needs is said to be of utmost importance in its own right as it contributes to people’s functioning. Moreover, need satisfaction forms the basis for the development of more optimal forms of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, internalization) and contributes to individual differences in people’s general motivational orientation, called general causality orientations, and differences in values that also affect how we live and thrive.

The application of positive psychology to the context of work has attracted enormous interest within both academic and practitioner domains over the past decade (e.g., Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Linley, Harrington, & Garcea, 2010; Luthans, 2002). From a practitioner perspective, there has been a proliferation of organizational development, human resource, talent management, leadership development, team development and coaching programs, initiatives, and interventions that have positive psychological principles at their core. The Gallup organization, for instance, has administered the Clifton Strengths Finder in thousands of organizations across the globe, aiming to help people learn about and build upon their talents and strengths to enhance all facets of their working experience (see Clifton & Harter, 2003).

This chapter explores how self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2017), an empirical theory about human motivation and personality, aligns with principles and practices of social and emotional learning (SEL) within the school context. Through its emphasis on basic psychological needs (BPN) for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, SDT proposes a broad perspective on how the social context can facilitate the development of social and emotional skills, which complements SEL programs. Research anchored in SDT has indeed established that students' academic, social, and emotional skills are determined at least partly by the extent to which their BPN are fulfilled in their learning environment. SDT also brings attention to the motivation and goals underlying the teaching and learning of social and emotional skills. Although SDT-based interventions mainly target the school or the classroom climate rather than students' skills, they can also foster the development of the five core social and emotional competencies defined by CASEL (2005). Implications and future directions for practices and research integrating SDT-based principles and interventions within SEL programs and practices are discussed.

We reflect upon the histories of the behavioral science and the neuroscience of motivation, taking note of how these increasingly consilient disciplines inform each other. This volume’s chapters illustrate how the field has moved beyond the study of immediate external rewards to the examination of neural mechanisms underlying varied motivational and appetitive states. Exemplifying this trend, we focus on emerging knowledge about intrinsic motivation, linking it with research on both the play and exploratory behaviors of nonhuman animals. We also speculate about large-scale brain networks related to salience processing as a possibly unique component of human intrinsic motivation. We further review emerging studies on neural correlates of basic psychological needs during decision making that are beginning to shine light on the integrative processes that support autonomous functioning. As with the contributions in this volume, such research reflects the increasing iteration between mechanistic studies and contemporary psychological models of human motivation.

Empirical findings have repeatedly demonstrated that students’ motivation decreases over the course of secondary education. This decline in learning motivation is one of the top challenges nowadays and is relevant for policy, as well as research and practice. Taking this educational challenge into account, the chapter targets the following questions: (1) Is a multicomponent, two-year intervention (combined student/teacher versus student-only intervention group) effective regarding the self-determined motivation and academic self-concept in mathematics of at-risk students? (2) How effective is the intervention for students with and without a migration background? And more generally: (3) Does the motivation (including students’ academic self-concept as a motivational self-belief) differ between students with and without a migration background at three different time points (beginning of Grade 7, end of Grades 7 and 8)? The results indicate that the intrinsic motivation of the combined intervention group could be fostered in the first intervention year. No significant treatment effect could be detected for the student-only group. In line with prior research, students with a migration background demonstrated higher levels of autonomous and controlled forms of motivation. However, students with and without a migration background did not develop differently across the two years. Implications for intervention research addressing adolescents’ self-determined motivation are discussed.

We explore the role of workplace friendships as a lens for understanding the emotional element and relational context for personal engagement (Kahn, 1990). The review of engagement theory differentiates personal engagement, recognizing the role of emotions play in enabling individuals’ “preferred selves.” Workplace relationships and friendship provide a conceptual discussion of individuals in social and workplace roles in engagement, drawing on friendship, emotion, attachment theories, particularly Kahn’s work. A case study drawn from recent research illustrates our discussion before concluding with ideas for the development of a future research agenda in answer to recent calls for work on the social context of engagement.

This chapter explores the nature of disengagement and the role played by emotions while disentangling the overlapping theories and definitions of both engagement and disengagement. We carried out two related studies exploring engagement and disengagement in 10 large UK public and private sector organisations. Both studies used an interpretive approach involving 75 managers and employees. The chapter suggests that emotions play a mediating role in the process of disengagement and the emotional reaction involved provides a distinction to being ‘not engaged’. It highlights the confusion that different approaches bring to distinguishing engagement and disengagement from other job attitudes.

Several job characteristics have been suggested to influence workers’ well-being. For example, Herzberg (1968) differentiated job characteristics that offset dissatisfaction such as social relations from job aspects that foster job satisfaction such as opportunities for advancement. While Hackman and Oldham (1976) focused on the motivational potential of job characteristics such as task identity and feedback, Karasek (1979) accentuated time pressure as a pivotal job demand. Together these models point out that various job characteristics may influence workers’ functioning.

In this study, we proposed and tested a motivational framework of emotional labor. This model incorporates positive and negative affect, motivation to express positive emotions, emotion regulation strategies (emotion suppression, reappraisal, and naturally felt emotions), and job satisfaction. Based on a sample of 147 employees, results generally supported our hypotheses and indicated that employees’ motivation to express positive emotions leads to the expression of the naturally felt emotions and the use of reappraisal. In contrast, motivated employees used less emotion suppression in their work. Hence, employees’ motivation seems to facilitate the adoption of a more authentic stance toward customers. Moreover, employees’ affectivity impacted emotional labor strategies. Finally, replicating past findings, job satisfaction was associated with a more authentic demeanor. This chapter contributes to emotional labor theory by extending our comprehension of emotional labor antecedents, which have been relatively under-investigated by emotion researchers. Moreover, this study demonstrated that self-determination theory is a relevant framework to better understand the emotional labor process. Overall, this motivational approach to the study of emotional labor can lead to more extensive research on emotional labor antecedents.