Search results

We review the interventions that promote motivation in academic contexts, with a focus on two primary questions: How can we motivate students to take more STEM courses? Once in those STEM courses, how can we keep students motivated and promote their academic achievement?

We have approached these two motivational questions from several perspectives, examining the theoretical issues with basic laboratory research, conducting longitudinal questionnaire studies in classrooms, and developing interventions implemented in different STEM contexts. Our research is grounded in three theories that we believe are complementary: expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), interest theory (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), and self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988). As social psychologists, we have focused on motivational theory and used experimental methods, with an emphasis on values – students’ perceptions of the value of academic tasks and students’ personal values that shape their experiences in academic contexts.

We review the experimental field studies in high-school science and college psychology classes, in which utility-value interventions promoted interest and performance for high-school students in science classes and for undergraduate students in psychology courses. We also review a randomized intervention in which parents received information about the utility value of math and science for their teens in high school; this intervention led students to take nearly one semester more of science and mathematics, compared with the control group. Finally, we review an experimental study of values affirmation in a college biology course and found that the intervention improved performance and retention for first-generation college students, closing the social-class achievement gap by 50%. We conclude by discussing the mechanisms through which these interventions work.

These interventions are exciting for their broad applicability in improving students’ academic choices and performance, they are also exciting regarding their potential for contributions to basic science. The combination of laboratory experiments and field experiments is advancing our understanding of the motivational principles and almost certainly will continue to do so. At the same time, interventions may benefit from becoming increasingly targeted at specific motivational processes that are effective with particular groups or in particular contexts.

For decades organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, generating a significant amount of research exploring the concept of what citizenship behavior is, and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences. While these behaviors have been and will continue to be valuable, there are changes in the workplace that have the potential to alter what types of OCBs will remain important for organizations in the future, as well as what types of opportunities for OCB exist for employees. In this chapter we consider the influence of 10 workplace trends related to human resource management that have the potential to influence both what types of citizenship behaviors employees engage in and how often they may engage in them. We build on these 10 trends that others have identified as having the potential to shape the workplace of the future, which include labor shortages, globalization, immigration, knowledge-based workers, increase use of technology, gig work, diversity, changing work values, the skills gap, and employer brands. Based on these 10 trends, we develop propositions about how each trend may impact OCB. We consider not only how these trends will influence the types of citizenship and opportunities for citizenship that employees can engage in, but also how they may shape the experiences of others related to OCB, including organizations and managers.

To explain the processes involved in rewriting one’s way of understanding phenomenon.

A model for characterizing cognitive conceptions of learning and unlearning is described through a historical, current, and forward thinking approach to understanding content. Ideas for the reorganization of information are proposed alongside application-oriented means of implementing learn over theory in classrooms.

For cognitive development to ensue, we must capitalize on students’ existing knowledge and ways of knowing the world through chance plus selection, piggy-backing, affective boosting/field facilitation, imitation, learning support systems, bias, LC learning, use of spare mental capacity, and the need for coherent self-concept.

Through effective facilitation of their learning, students can hone their skills, recognize their efforts toward their successes, write and rewrite their existing schematic frameworks, develop and maintain positive self-concepts, and advance their systems for understanding their worlds and how to progress to subsequent levels of attainment independently.

I examine how four distinct episodes of environmental policy debate have been depicted in the Vancouver Sun, British Columbia's largest daily newspaper. Discourse analysis is applied to the Protected Areas Strategy, the Forest Practices Code, the Working Forest and the Results-based Forest Practices Code. The network of power/knowledge constructed through these texts limits debate to the hegemonic alternatives of “ecomanagerialism” and “eco-capitalism.” This textual reality is constructed from three major organizational standpoints: government, industry and environmentalists. The voices of First Nations and forestry labour are marginalized, as are discourses that challenge the hegemony of the “treadmill of production.”

Although female participation in the labour market has increased significantly over the last 50 years, transport remains a male dominated sector and maritime transport in particular appears to lag behind other modes. It is important to recognise that maritime careers struggle to recruit more generally. This chapter considers the gender gap in the maritime industry and asks what would make the maritime industry more attractive to women. It explores the literature through the lenses of career-decision, career decidedness and career self-efficacy in order to present a conceptual model to explain the persistent gap and consider what could be done to address it. Career choices, development and performance are affected by contextual variables, both personal and environmental, which can promote or hinder career development outcomes. In maritime transport, career perception, workplace culture, social capital and development opportunities still play a major part in the decision-making process and deter women from engaging with the maritime profession. This chapter proposes four interventions to effect much-needed change.

Social movement organizations increasingly engage directly with companies, rather than using the political process to regulate them. This development has spawned lively new literatures on non-market strategy and on social movements, but the two would benefit from engaging each other more effectively. A common framework and set of shared constructs would allow for collaborative theorizing on how new issues emerge into the public sphere, how interest groups mobilize, and how public opinion is formed; transaction cost analysis, with its primarily verbal theorizing, may prove a helpful starting point. Empirical knowledge is growing rapidly, yet many exciting questions remain open.

Since at least the 1970s, the American research university system has experienced episodic periods of austerity, frequently accompanied by expressions of concern about the threats that these conditions pose to U.S. scientific and technological leadership. In general, austerity has been tied to fluctuations in Federal Government funding of academic research and macroeconomic fluctuations that have shrunk state government budget revenues. Even amidst these episodes, the system has continued to expand and decentralize. The issue at present is whether this historic resiliency, of being a marvelous invalid, will overcome adverse contemporary trends in Federal and state government funding, as well as political trends that eat away at the societal bonds between universities and their broader publics. The paper juxtaposes examinations of the organizational and political influences that have given rise to the American research university system, trends in research revenues and research costs, and contemporary efforts by universities to balance the two. It singles out the secular decline in state government’s support of public universities as the principal reason why this period of contraction is different from those of the past. Rather though then these trends portending a market shakeout, as some at times have predicted, the projection here is that the academic research system will continue to be characterized by excess capacity and recurrent downward pressures on research costs. Because the adverse impacts are concentrated in the public university sector, they may also spill over into political threats to the current system of awarding academic research grants primarily via competitive, merit review arrangements.