Selected Publications | Assessments
Background
I was trained as a life-span developmental psychologist at the Pennsylvania State University, teaching at the laboratory preschool and focusing on the study of "curiosity” and "enthusiasm." After four years, I received my Ph.D. in Human Development in 1981. I spent the next seven years as a Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin, Germany, where I was part of a research team, including Michael Chapman and Paul Baltes, that developed a new conceptualization of children's perceived control, studied the differential development of its components during elementary school, and investigated its role in children's achievement in school; I received tenure there in 1983. In 1988, I moved to the University of Rochester to work with the Motivation Research Group (MRG) in the Department of Psychology and the College of Education and Human Development, where I received tenure in 1990. Through working with the other members of the MRG, including Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and James Connell, my perspective broadened to elaborate the components of "engagement" and to incorporate key self-system processes in addition to perceived control or competence, specifically relatedness and autonomy. These constructs became critical ingredients as we developed our motivational theory of coping (with James Wellborn). I moved to Portland State University in the Fall of 1992, where I was promoted to Full Professor in 1996. Here at PSU, I have continued to work with teams of faculty, post-docs, and graduate and undergraduate students, pursuing empirical and theoretical questions about motivation, the self, engagement, and coping during childhood and adolescence. I served as Associate Chair and then as Department Chair from 2007 to 2020.
Research Interests
- Life-span development. Developmental systems science.
- Motivational development across childhood and adolescence.
- Development of academic identity, engagement, coping, and resilience.
- Special focus on intrinsic motivation and autonomous self-regulation.
- Role of close relationships with parents, teachers, and peers.
- Theory and measurement construction.
My research focuses on motivational development in schools during middle childhood and adolescence. This includes the development of students’ academic identities, engagement, coping, and resilience. I am interested in how developing self-systems (like sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy) can exert so powerful an influence on children's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, including their active participation, enthusiasm, enjoyment, and tenacity in the face of challenging academic work. I am convinced that social contexts and close relationships with parents, teachers, and peers play a crucial role in promoting or undermining students’ motivational development, and I am fascinated by how these multiple worlds work together as parts of complex social ecologies that shape students’ academic functioning and development. I am especially interested in school transitions, like the third grade transition and the transition to middle school.
My background in lifespan development and developmental systems meta-theories has meant that, over the years, an ongoing task has been building an integrative conceptual framework for my research. Hence, I enjoy spending time on theory development and measurement construction. I approach new areas by first constructing or refining "developmentally-friendly" theories, and then creating corresponding measures. Hence, sprinkled among my empirical studies are a series of books and papers on meta-theories, theories, and measures of perceived control, engagement, student-teacher relationships, parenting, coping, academic identity, motivational resilience, and teacher mindfulness.
Current projects. I think of my current work as involving three intertwined strands:
1) Motivational Resilience. The first targets "motivational resilience" and uses a large longitudinal data set, focusing on children and their parents, teachers, and peers, over four years and eight measurement points from the beginning of third to the end of seventh grade. This project brings together work on two key processes: students’ ongoing engagement, or their enthusiastic participation in educational activities (especially as supported by intrinsic motivation); and academic coping, or how students deal with challenges in their schoolwork and homework. The project contributes to ongoing debates by (1) proposing a conceptualization of motivational resilience, (2) arguing for its central role in the dynamics of academic development, (3) presenting psychometrically sound assessments of engagement and coping, and (4) empirically exploring the antecedents and consequences of motivational resilience in the classroom. I am interested in how to help children and adolescents develop a rich and flexible repertoire of tools to deal with everyday obstacles and problems in their academic work.
2) Parents, Teachers, and Peers. The second strand of my work brings together my long-standing interest in the roles of parents and teachers in student’s motivational development with research from my collaborator, Thomas Kindermann, who studies the importance of peer relationships. We view all three of these kinds of relationships and interactions as parts of complex social ecologies that shape students’ academic functioning and development. We are especially interested in different ways that the social worlds of family, school, and peers can work together collectively. For example, whether their effects are positively synergistic or whether high quality relationships with some social partners can buffer children’s motivation from the effects of poor relationships with others.
3) Development of Coping. The third strand is the construction of a lifespan theory of the development of coping, which I am working on with Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck (Griffith University, Australia). We are trying to figure out how developments in underlying processes, such as stress neurophysiology, self-regulation, motivation, and cognition contribute to qualitative shifts in how individuals react to and deal with stressful events. We favor a developmental systems approach, that defines coping as “action regulation under stress” and views it as part of a larger multi-level system that emerges on the level of action but incorporates the neurophysiological and psychological subsystems that give rise to it and the interpersonal and societal contexts in which it is embedded. This perspective has opened many avenues for exploring age-graded reorganizations in the coping system and for examining how we can intentionally scaffold its healthy development.
I am also finishing up my work on a community project, captured broadly under the name Learning Gardens, run by Dilafruz Williams from the School of Education, that is taking place in several elementary and middle schools who serve low-income and minority children and youth. This project involves culturally diverse students, their families and communities and addresses issues of food security through the creation of food-based and garden-based science education. Our team was recruited to help design and conduct research on the effects of students' participation in the Learning Gardens on the development of their academic engagement, motivation, and coping. I also work with graduate students on other applied topics that are closely related to issues of motivation and coping.
Developmental Science and Education
The Applied Developmental area offers training in the interdisciplinary concentration of Developmental Science and Education (DeSE). Faculty and graduate and undergraduate students share a common interest in understanding schools as primary cultural contexts of human learning and development. Research projects focus on the learning, development, and well-being of students, their peers and teachers, and school staff, starting with preschool programs during early childhood and continuing through to college and university experiences during emerging adulthood. DeSE is also concerned with the application of research strategies and knowledge from the developmental disciplines to address issues facing educators and parents. DeSE is particularly interested in working with schools that serve students from racialized, minoritized, immigrant, and low income communities. DeSE training is available to doctoral students in all areas of psychology as well as graduate students from other fields.
Undergraduate Courses Taught
- Human Development
- Life-Span Developmental Psychology
- Social Development
- Developmental Psychopathology
- Motivation in Schools
Graduate Classes Taught
- Development of Motivation & Self-Regulation in Education
- Life-Span Developmental Psychology
- Perceived Control, Motivation
- Theory and Research in Education
- Metatheories and Mechanisms of Development
- Development of Coping
- Parenting in Context
- Developmental Psychopathology