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Researchers have proposed a variety of models to depict, explain, and understand ethical decision-making processes. Rest (1986) proposed a four-stage, individually oriented model, in which a person who makes a moral decision must (1) recognize the moral issue, (2) make a moral judgment, (3) establish moral intent, and (4) make moral decisions. Similarly, Ferrell, Gresham, and Fraedrich (1989) developed a five-stage model that included awareness, cognitions, evaluations, determination, and actions. Finally, Trevino (1986) proposed a slightly different model that begins with the recognition of an ethical dilemma and proceeds to a cognition stage in which individuals make moral judgments that further affect their ethical or unethical decisions (see Jones, 1991, for a review).

As educators seek ways to enhance student motivation and improve achievement, promising advances are being made in adaptive approaches to instruction. Learning technologies are emerging that promote a high level of personalization of the learning experience. One type of personalization is context personalization, in which instruction is presented in the context of learners’ individual interests in areas like sports, music, and video games. Personalized contexts may elicit situational interest, which can in turn spur motivational and metacognitive states like positive affect and focused attention. Personalized contexts may also allow for concepts to become grounded in prior knowledge by fostering connections to everyday activity. In this Chapter, we discuss the theoretical, design, and implementation issues to consider when creating interventions that utilize context personalization to enhance motivation.

First, we provide an overview of context personalization as an instructional principle and outline the emerging evidence that personalization can enhance motivation and improve achievement. We then discuss the theory hypothesized to account for the effectiveness of context personalization and discuss the approaches to personalization interventions. We close by discussing some of the practical issues to consider when bridging the design and implementation of personalization interventions. Throughout the paper, we anchor our discussion to our own research which focuses on the use of context personalization in middle and high school mathematics.

The theoretical mechanisms through which context personalization enhances learning may include (1) eliciting positive affective reactions to the instruction, (2) fostering feelings of value for the instructional content through connections to valued personal interests, or (3) drawing upon prior funds of knowledge of the topic. We provide hypotheses for the relatedness of context personalization to triggering and maintaining situational interest, and explore potential drawbacks of personalization, considering research on seductive details, desirable difficulties, and authenticity of connections to prior knowledge. We further examine four approaches to personalized learning – “fill-in-the-blank” personalization, matching instruction to individual topic interests, group-level personalization, and utility-value interventions. These approaches vary in terms of the depth of the personalization – whether simple, shallow connections are made to interest topics, or deep, meaningful connections are made to learners’ actual experiences. The consideration of depth also interacts with grain size – whether content is personalized based on the broader interests of a group, or the individual experiences of a particular learner. And finally, personalization interventions can have different levels of ownership – an instructor can generate the personalized connections, the connections can be made by the curriculum designers, or learners can take an active role in personalizing their own learning. Finally, we discuss the practical implementation issues when bringing context personalization interventions into K-12 classrooms. Personalization can be logistically difficult to implement, given that learners hold a diverse array of interests, and may experience each of those interests differently. In addition, particular types of instructional content may show greater sensitivity when personalization is implemented, and personalization may be most helpful for learners with certain background characteristics.

Realizing the promise of personalized learning is an unsolved problem in education whose solution becomes ever more critical as we confront a new digital age. Context personalization has the potential to bring together several well-established strands of research on improving student learning – research on the development of interest, funds of knowledge, and utility value – into one powerful intervention.

We review previous research on intergenerational conflict, focusing on the practical implications of this research for organizational leaders. We explain how the interaction between the interpersonal and intertemporal dimensions of intergenerational decisions creates the unique psychology of intergenerational decision-making behavior. In addition, we review the boundary conditions that have characterized much of the previous research in this area, and we examine the potential effects of loosening these constraints. Our proposals for future research include examination of the effect of intra-generational decision making on intergenerational beneficence, consideration of the role of third parties and linkage issues, investigation of the effects of intergenerational communications and negotiation when generations can interact, examination of the role of social power in influencing intergenerational interactions, investigation of the interaction between temporal construal and immortality striving, and exploration of the ways in which present decision makers detect and define the intergenerational dilemmas in their social environments.

The attractiveness of dynamic systems perspectives for expanding thinking about motivation, more particularly interest, lies in the central proposition that the individual is a self-organizing system in which “novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development” (Lewis, 2000, p. 36). As Lewis further points out, “self-organization is not a single theory or model. Rather it is an idea … that promises coherent explanation in the study of pattern, change and novelty” (Lewis, 2000, p. 42). Thelen and Smith (2006) have proposed that self-organization is a “fundamental property of living things” and “by self-organization we mean that pattern and order emerge from the interactions of the components of a complex system without explicit instructions, either in the organism itself or from the environment” (p. 259). They suggest that understanding change and development concerns “the elaborate causal web between active individuals and their continually changing environments” (p. 271) and refer to specific units of organization within the system as “patterns assembled for task-specific purposes whose form and stability depended on both the immediate and more distant history of the system” (p. 284). To date, dynamic systems perspectives have been applied to a wide range of psychological phenomena, for example, the development of perceptual, motor and cognitive systems in infancy and early childhood (see e.g., Thelen & Smith, 2006). Jörg, Davis, and Nickmans (2007) have argued for a similar approach for the learning sciences. They propose a new complexity paradigm suggesting that more attention needs to be given to understanding the dynamics of the complex systems that make up the science of education and teaching.

Purpose – We review how team members’ identities and interests affect team functioning, paying special attention to subgroup dynamics triggered by faultlines and coalitions. This review sets the stage for describing novel pathways through which identities and interests, when considered together, can affect team processes and outcomes.

Design/approach – We use an extended example of a hypothetical team's decision-making process to illustrate how team members’ identities and interests intertwine to affect the distribution and flow of information, subgroup dynamics, and team decisions.

Findings – We develop three specific ideas to demonstrate the utility of this integrative approach. First, we show how the formation of identity-based subgroups can shape information sharing to create a hidden profile where there was none initially. Second, we describe how individual defection can weaken subgroup competition and, paradoxically, increase the chance that a team will optimize its collective welfare. Third, we analyze how shared identities can shape team members’ side conversations in ways that create shared interests and information among those with similar identities, even before the team begins its formal meetings.

Originality/value – By identifying new routes through which identities and interests can affect team functioning, we provide a foundation for scholars in this domain to theoretically develop and empirically test these and related ideas. More generally, we encourage scholars to study the interplay among identities, interests, and information in their own research to paint a more complete picture of how individuals, subgroups, and teams perform.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which explains how individual organisms can become exquisitely adapted to their environments, does not explain the evolution of adaptive societies with equal ease. To understand the nature of the problem, imagine a mutant individual who behaves in a way that increases the survival of everyone in her society, including herself, to an equal degree. Such a “no-cost public good” might not appear very feasible (and will soon be amended), but is useful for illustrative purposes. By increasing the fitness of everyone, the mutant trait will not increase in frequency within the society (other than by drift, which can equally cause a decrease in frequency). This example illustrates the elementary fact that natural selection is based on relative fitness. It’s not enough for a mutant trait to increase its own survival and reproduction; it must do so more than alternative traits in the population. The relative nature of fitness makes the evolutionary forces within a population insensitive to the welfare of the population as a whole.

All clients are to some extent subject to their attorney's construction of their interests. This state of affairs reaches the extreme in the case of the class action because the class action permits masses of individual claims to be combined in one proceeding to promote efficiency and solve collective action problems. Class action scholars have long debated the role of class members without conclusion. The doctrine on whether and when the class member is considered a “party” to the litigation is incoherent. Neither courts nor commentators are clear on limits of the ethical duty of class counsel – does it run to individual class members or to the class as a whole? And if such a duty runs to the class as a whole, is the class an entity, like a corporation, or an aggregation of individuals each of whom is entitled to enforce class counsel's attorney–client obligations?