Process matters: Teachers benefit their classrooms and students when they deliver an identity-based motivation intervention with fidelity

Abstract

Students value school success but often experience classroom norms implying that learning is easy and succeeding in school is not difficult. Applying an identity-based motivation (IBM) lens highlights three ways succeed-with-ease-not-effort norms can undermine students’ grades and increase their risk of course failure. Succeed-with-ease-not-effort norms reduce the likelihood that students experience school as relevant to their future goals, experience right now as the time to get going, and difficulties as signals of schoolwork's importance, not its impossibility. To support student academic outcomes, we examine Pathways-to-Success, a classroom-level intervention operationalizing IBM theory in a 3-cycle, 3-year development design (N = 1142 8th-graders, 87% low-income families, 64% Latinx, 20% African American). We document that Pathways-to-Success can be sustainable; our middle school teachers implemented and taught other teachers to implement Pathways-to-Success. We use structural equation models to show that effects are due to the theorized process; teachers who implemented with more signal clarity supported academic success by bolstering their students' identity-based motivation. We operationalized signal clarity as a mean of five fidelity components (dosage, adherence, quality, responsiveness, receipt). Signal clarity matters; students experiencing Pathways-to-Success with a clearer signal have a higher identity-based motivation score. Higher identity-based motivation yields better school outcomes.