Development of Achievement Motivation and Engagement

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter we review the research on the development of children's motivation and engagement. We organize our review into four major sections: the development of children's achievement motivation; gender, cultural, and ethnic differences in children's motivation; socialization of motivation in the family; and socialization of motivation in school. We take a social‐cognitive expectancy‐value theoretical perspective to organize our discussion of this work. We first discuss the development of children's motivation and engagement and take another look at the often‐observed decline in motivation, focusing on new work showing different patterns in these declines among different groups of children. We also discuss how children's motivation relates to their performance and choice, two kinds of outcomes of major importance to children's healthy development. The second major section discusses gender, ethnic, and cultural differences in children's motivation and the important advances researchers have made in understanding these over the past 10 years.In the family and school socialization sections we focus on processes by which parents, teachers, and schools can impact children's motivation both positively and negatively. We note the similarities of these processes across socializers: Providing appropriate challenges and emotional warmth and support, and having high expectations for children. We discuss the need for more integrative studies of how parents and also teachers impact children's motivation. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of important future directions: A continuing focus on culture and motivation, further examination of motivation in specific domains and contexts, a stronger focus on biological influences on the development of motivation, and a consideration of unconscious processes and their impact on the development of motivation.