Promoting Motivation in Mathematics Through Personalized Relevance Interventions

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Hanna Gaspard
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 515854064

Expectancy-value theory posits that students’ expectancies about how well they can do in a domain and their subjective valuing of this domain increase their motivation. Indeed, an impressive body of research shows that students’ expectancies and values are important predictors of their engagement and achievement at school, as well as their educational trajectories. However, these motivational beliefs in various academic domains, particularly in mathematics, typically decrease over the school years. It is therefore important to find ways to sustain motivation in the school context.Drawing on expectancy-value theory, short interventions to enhance the perceived relevance of the learning material for students’ lives have shown to be highly promising for promoting students’ motivation, achievement, and academic choices. Such interventions can thus represent a powerful, cost-efficient lever to promote students’ academic development. At the same time, some studies have also yielded a mixed pattern of effects and the effects were found to vary depending on students’ characteristics. Thus, it is important to examine the processes that make these interventions effective for specific groups of students.The proposed project builds on prior intervention studies by the applicant, in which a relevance intervention was tested with ninth grade students in mathematics. It extends this prior work by taking a closer look at the processes at play and systematically testing how these interventions can be personalized for students with different characteristics. Drawing on the intervention material used in prior studies, a digital relevance intervention will be developed that will enable personalization. Two experimental studies with ninth grade students in mathematics classrooms will be conducted to test different factors to be considered in the personalization of relevance interventions and to examine the efficacy of a personalized relevance intervention against a “one size fits all” intervention and a control condition. Drawing on expectancy-value theory, it will further be tested whether a combination of an expectancy intervention with a relevance intervention is more efficacious than a relevance intervention alone.The findings of the proposed project will have implications for theory, but will also be highly relevant for educational practice. It is expected that students from groups at risk for low motivation in mathematics (i.e., female adolescents, students with a migration background, and students with low expectancies) benefit particularly from these interventions. They can therefore help to reduce disparities related to these factors in educational practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Judith M. Harackiewicz