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What Do Context, Power, and
Identity
Have to Do
With Motivation?
Associate Professor of Psychological Foundations
Abstract
The impetus for this study rested on the need, as articulated by Wexler (1996), to adopt a critical stance that compels us to push aside common sense and not accept the easiest symbolic organization of everyday life as the only or best one (p. xvii). Gazing critically at theories of achievement motivation may lead to the realization that we may not have ventured far from common sense when we have focused so intently on such micro-level factors as student goals, interests, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, or self-schema (Murphy & Alexander, 1998). The danger of not probing past the obvious is that the social sciences may work to reinforce or affirm everyday culture as natural or inevitable (Wexler, 1996). This impedes progress towards a more democratic reality because the effects of more pervasive historical, cultural, and social forces are not addressed. To substantiate the need to complicate our thinking about motivation by incorporating an examination of such macro-level factors as institutional and social contexts, sociocultural theories and the experiences and insights of Asian American students attending a predominantly white university located in the deep South will be considered. Because Asian Americans are socially constructed as being motivated towards educational attainment, we are afforded an opportunity to examine how having certain aspects of one's identity imposed from the outside impacts motivation. Furthermore, the powerlessness of this group within this particular institution of higher education brings into high relief the impact of context and power on micro-level manifestations of motivation.
For additional information, please contact Patty Whang at: patricia_whang@csumb.edu,
or the Institute for Field-Based Teacher Education,
References Cited
Murphy, P. K., & Alexander, P. A. (1998). A motivated exploration of motivation terminology.
Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association,
Wexler, P. (1996). Critical social
psychology.
Publications
Whang, P.,
Whang, P.A., & Waters, G.A. (2001). Transformational spaces in teacher education: MAP(ing) a pedagogy linked to a practice of freedom. Journal of Teacher Education, 52, 197-210. (I gratefully acknowledged the support of the foundation in this piece.)
Presentations
Whang, P.A.,
Waters, G.A., McDonough, S., Lauglin, M., Moore, B.J.
(2002). Hitting
the streets, writing the world: reSEARCHing for
social justice. Paper to be presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Whang, P.A.
(2001). Caught
in the act: Undergraduates as innocent bystanders and useful witnesses.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association,
Whang, P.A.,
&
Erevelles, N., Shabaaz, D., Whang, P.A., & Young, R. (2000). Becoming undisciplined: Transdisciplinary as transformative praxis. Paper presented at "Rethinking the Human Sciences: Interdisciplinary Studies, Global Education, & the Languages of Criticism" Conference at The George Washington University.
Whang, P.A.,
& Waters, G. (2000). An outbound trajectory of possibilities:
Social justice, transformation, and the teaching of educational psychology. Paper to be presented at
the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,