Special Interest Group 8 – Motivation and Emotion

ICM 2024 in Bern: Call for submissions is now open until the 29th of February 2024. The ICM will be held the 28th until the 30th of August 2024 in Bern, Switzerland. Please visit the conference website for further information, details about the submission, dates, and the program!

Summer School ICM 2024 in Bern: The tradition of supporting young researchers and giving them the opportunity to present and discuss their work will be continued by offering a summer school prior to the conference. The summer school will take place the 26th and 27th of August 2024 at the Schloss Ueberstorf venue. Please take a look at the summer school page on the conference website for further information about important dates, teachers, and the program!

We are looking forward seeing all of you at the ICM and summer school this summer in Bern!

During our members meeting at EARLI 2023 in Thessaloniki our new SIG8 coordinators were introduced!

Coordinator: After serving as a JURE coordinator some years ago Martin Daumiller now returns as SIG8 Coordinator for the next four years (2023-2027). For the next two years, Martin will be working together with Hanna Gaspard who will complete her term as coordinator for our sig in 2025. We would like to thank Hanna Jävenoja for four years of excellent work for our SIG!

New SIG8 JURE coordinator: Our new SIG8 JURE Coordinator is Jonne Bloem. She will be working together with Juliane Schlesier for the next two years. Jonne will be replacing Julia Mori who served our SIG the past four years. It was a pleasure to work with you Julia, your positive energy and innovative ideas were a great addition to our team!

Dear SIG 8 members, This is just a kind reminder to nominate a long-term SIG8 member for the Lifetime achievement Recognition and to sign up to our very first “How to…?”-talk -meeting.  Call for Nominations for the Lifetime Achievement Recognition. Please find the call and the nomination form here and suggest our long-term sig member for the award by the 8th of March. This award honors a distinguished SIG08 member who has made a significant contribution to the research on motivation and/or emotions, has been an active member of our SIG community, and has had a positive influence on the field through sustained collaboration with colleagues.   Sign up to our Exciting new SIG 8 activity! In March, the new bi-monthly “How to…?”-talk series will start. This new SIG 8 activity provides an opportunity to keep in touch with other junior and early career researchers in between the yearly conferences. In short meetings, we will discuss various topics, such as “How to… get your paper published?” or “How to… expand your network?”. Please register here. Event Timing: bimonthly online meetings 11:45-12:15 CET First online meeting: March 17th 2022 If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us at sig8online@gmail.com Best wishes, Your SIG8 Coordinators Hanna, Hanna, Julia and Juli     Contact info: Hanna G. (hanna.gaspard@tu-dormund.de) Hanna J. (hanna.jarvenoja@oulu.fi) Julia (iuliia.morinaj@edu.unibe.ch) Juliane (juliane.schlesier@uni-greifswald.de)

Check and renew your SIG8 membership via the EARLI.org Dashboard (“My recent orders” 🡪 “add new membership” 🡪 add SIG-08 membership for an 8 EUR fee). This will enable you to continue to receive our newsletters. Thank you for your continued support and active involvement with the SIG!

ICM 2022 in Dresden: the call for submissions is now open. The deadline for submissions is January 20th, 2022. The conference will be held as a hybrid conference from August 24th to August 26th, including a joint day with SIG16 on August 26th. We welcome resubmissions of proposals accepted for the ICM 2020 conference as well as new submissions. Please visit the conference website for further information regarding the submissions and important dates: https://sig8meetssig16-dresden.de

Summer School ICM 2022 in Dresden: We are continuing our great tradition of supporting young researchers by offering a summer school prior to the conference. The Joint Summer School of SIG 8 and SIG 16 will take place from August 22nd to August 23rd in a venue near/in Dresden, preceding the ICM. More information can be found here:https://sig8meetssig16-dresden.de/summer-school-2/

New SIG8 Coordinator: Hanna Gaspard became our new SIG8 Coordinator at our members meeting at EARLI 2021, and she will be serving in this role for the next four years (2021-2025). Hanna Gaspard will be working together with Hanna Järvenoja for the next two years until Hanna J. completes her term as coordinator of our SIG in 2023. Fani Lauermann stepped down after completing her four-year term as coordinator. Thank you Fani for your excellent service to our SIG!

New SIG8 JURE coordinators: Juliane Schlesier was elected as our new SIG8 JURE Coordinator. She will be working together with Julia Morinaj who already started to work in this role two years ago. Juliane will be replacing Martin Daumiller, who stepped down after serving as a JURE Coordinator for two years. Thank you, Martin, for your outstanding service and representation of our junior members, and welcome, Juli, to our team!

• 2020 SIG8 Lifetime Achievement Recognition: In light of her contributions to our scientific community and to our SIG, Dr. Ruth Butler received the SIG8 Lifetime Achievement Recognition 2020. This award is usually announced at the ICM conference, but because of the postponed conference, it was given to Ruth at this year’s EARLI conference. She was nominated by Stuart Karabenick, and 11 more proponents. Warmest congratulations, Ruth!
• 2021 SIG8 Student Research Excellence Recognition: One excellent young researcher was recognized at the SIG8 members meeting at EARLI 2021, for her outstanding first-authored paper presented at the conference, based on ratings received by an international selection committee of long-term SIG8 members. Warm congratulations to Daria Benden (TU Dortmund University) for the recognition of her paper on “Short-Term Relations Between Students’ Situated Expectancies and Task Values in the Math Domain”. We also congratulate her co-author Fani Lauermann.
   

We look forward to our SIG 8 business meeting next Thursday (September 2) from 4pm to 5pm CEST. Please make sure to attend. A few highlights:

• We will introduce and honor the 2020 ICM Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
• We will present the EARLI 2021 Student Research Excellence Award
• We will report on SIG8 activities 2020-2021
• We will inform our members of our plans for the ICM 2022 (including our summer school)

We are aware that some SIG members encountered technical issues with Pheedloop. To ensure that everyone can participate in the business meeting, we are sending the Zoom link directly within this email. Please use this link to join our business meeting, in case of any issues with Pheedloop.

Zoom link to manually join the business meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82132088612?pwd=WGRJOFVJK0lKNlZiT0NpZlErdjBzZz09

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting!

Dear SIG8 Members, 

EARLI 2021 is fast approaching and we have several important announcements to share with you: 

1) The SIG8 Business Meeting is (tentatively) scheduled for September 2nd, and we will reach out with further details as soon as we know more. Please mark this date in your calendar! In this meeting, we will report on past SIG8 activities, we will honor the ICM 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and we will announce the next ICM 2022 conference, as well as the new SIG8 coordinators. We look forward to seeing you there! 

2) For all junior members: Please vote for a JURE coordinator by July, 14 2021. Five excellent candidates have applied for this position. You will learn more about them and will be able to submit your vote by clicking on the following link: https://ww3.unipark.de/uc/jc/

3) Please check the EARLI conference program by using the following link; SIG8 members are, as usual, very well represented: https://www.earli.org/sites/default/files/conference-program/2021-06/EARLI2021-PROGRAMME-140621.pdf

4) The EARLI conference will be hosted via PheedLoop. You can attend a virtual training here: https://pheedloop.com/more/virtual-attendee-training

5) Please mark your calendars for the EARLI SIG8 Invited Symposium, which is dedicated to our late colleague Stuart A. Karabenick and his many contributions to the SIG: Session Z 17, Session Room 15, 27/08/2021 at 15:45: The Life and Legacy of Stuart A. Karabenick: “Acquired Wisdom? More Like Lessons Learned”

6) Request for Studies for Meta-analysis on Achievement Goals / Goal Structures and Academic Dishonesty: At the Motivation Lab of the University of Augsburg and Mannheim, we are currently conducting a meta-analysis on the linkages between achievement goals and goal structures on academic dishonesty (e.g., cheating, plagiarism) in educational settings. We are searching for any grey or unpublished literature on this topic. If you have manuscripts, data or other literature that might fit this description, we would be very happy if you could send us a copy of the respective work to martin.daumiller@uni-a.de as soon as possible, and ideally before July 31, 2021.

Your SIG 08 Coordinators,
Fani Lauermann (fani.lauermann@uni-bonn.de),
Hanna Järvenoja (hanna.jarvenoja@oulu.fi),
Julia Morinaj (iuliia.morinaj@edu.unibe.ch) and
Martin Daumiller (Martin.Daumiller@phil.uni-augsburg.de)

Dr. Monique Boekaerts is an international pioneer and highly recognized researcher in educational psychology. Her ideas about motivation and self-regulation have transformed how learning and teaching are approached around the world. Dr. Boekaerts was born in Belgium, studied psychology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, and obtained her PhD at Tilburg University. She was a full professor at the Radboud-Universität Nijmegen and at Leiden University.

One of the most prominent contributions of Dr. Boekaerts is her “Dual Processing Self-regulation Model” that has generated extensive empirical studies and describes the dynamic aspects of self-regulated learning and includes motivation, emotion, metacognition, self-concept, and learning. Her publications include numerous peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical articles in top-level international peer-refereed journals and books. Well-known books of hers include the Handbook of Self-Regulation (2000) and Motivation to Learn (2002), which have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Greek. Dr. Boekaerts is a founding member of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) and served as EARLI president from 1999–2001, as well as the president of the Division of Educational, Instructional, and School Psychology of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP, 1998–2002).

In light of these achievements, Dr. Boekarts received the EARLI SIG8 Lifetime Award in 2010, and was afterwards also awarded with the 2015 EARLI Oeuvre Award. To learn more about her career, motivations, and research, we asked her several questions. Her answers are based on excerpts from an interview with Héfer Bembenutty in his book “Contemporary Pioneers in Teaching and Learning” (Bembenutty, 2015, pp. 75–87). For the full text, please see: https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Contemporary-Pioneers-in-Teaching-and-Learning

Personal career/ Your own motivations

Why did you decide to quit being a teacher and start a research career?

When I was 18, I ranked top of my class and parents were quite proud but they did not want me to go to university, because in their opinion that was not for girls and anyway it cost a lot of money. Instead, I enrolled in teacher training college. I was certified as a (foreign) language teacher (English, German, and Dutch) and taught for two years. I first taught students with special educational needs. I think that my philosophy of teaching took shape in that period. I discovered that the “power of learning” resides in all students but that it needs to be triggered time and time again. I also learned the hard way that you need to create a learning environment based on trust, where students can experience that their actions lead to success and that they are supported by a competent, reliable, and caring teacher.

After six months teaching these children, I got a job as a language teacher in a regular school and afterward, I got a job as a foreign language teacher at the Catholic University of Leuven. While working at the university, I became interested in psychology. I decided to go to England and applied for a job. I immediately obtained a job, which qualified me to register as a UK student. After taking an entrance examination at Reading University, I was offered the opportunity to study psychology. I finished my psychology degree in 2 years. Next, I applied for a junior teaching position at the Teacher Training Department at Antwerp University and started there in 1974. I was working in a teacher-training department and needed to make myself familiar with Educational Psychology.

After three years, my Ph.D. was ready but to my surprise, I could not defend it in Belgium because they did not accept my UK bachelor degree. I found a promoter in the Netherlands who was willing to defend my case. Afterward, I applied for the job as a full professor in Educational Psychology at Nijmegen University. I was never a junior professor: I went from being a Ph.D. student to being a full professor. This is not such a good starting position because you do not have a good role model and you cannot learn from your mistakes.

Research in your field

Can you please describe your Dual Processing Self-regulation Model? What are the differences between your model and other SR models?

The Dual Processing Self-regulation Model describes self-regulation as a set of dynamic, interacting regulation processes. The model describes how students, who are confronted with a learning task, form a fast mental representation of the situation (appraisal). They will start a learning activity in a mindful mode, when their appraisal of the learning situation is such that the learning task is congruent with their personal goals, needs, and aspirations. Such a match elicits a feel-good state, characterized by trust, confidence, being interested in the task, and wanting to expand one’s competence. These positive cognitions and emotions about the learning situation encourage students to form a commitment to the task and move onto the learning or mastery pathway. This pathway refers to activation of cognitive and motivation strategies that ensure the expansion of knowledge and competence. If the learning situation is initially appraised as threatening to well-being – either because the task is perceived as tedious, difficult, ambiguous, or complex, or because the students do not perceive enough decision latitude or support – negative cognitions and emotions are triggered (e.g., anxiety, irritation, disappointment). This negative feeling state initiates activities into the well-being pathway straight away, which refers to strategies that protect students from threat, harm, or loss (e.g., avoidance, denial, giving up, distraction).

To my knowledge, my model of self-regulated learning was the first model that describes the dynamic, non-stop appraisals that assign meaning to the learning activity itself. What is more, my Dual Processing Self-regulation Model explains how these non-stop appraisals dynamically shift the focus of the self-regulation system to any of three purposes of self-regulation, namely: (1) expanding knowledge and skills (i.e., activities in the mastery pathway with a focus on the task), (2) preventing threat to the self and loss of resources so that one’s well-being is kept within reasonable bounds (i.e., activities in the well-being pathway with a focus on the self), and (3) protecting one’s commitments by using activities that re-route attention from the well-being pathway to the mastery pathway (i.e., from a focus on the self to a focus on the task).

What are your next goals regarding your research?

I am currently involved in training parents and grandparents in recognizing approach and avoidance goals in their (grand) children. I found that (grand) parents, who are knowledgeable about how motivation and emotion work, are better equipped to assist them in regulating their motivation and emotion in relation to schoolwork.

In your opinion, what will be the most important questions to answer concerning self-regulation in the future?

Up to now, researchers have not devoted much research attention to meta-motivational and meta-interpersonal knowledge. Yet, it is essential to describe the different types of conditional knowledge that students must accrue to steer and direct the different types of self-regulation strategies. Likewise, little research is available on the use of the motivation, volition, and emotion regulation strategies that students successfully use in the classroom.

About the award

What does being a part of the EARLI mean to you and what are your most memorable experiences, when you think about EARLI?

I had been one of the founding members of the association and I had seen how the organization had grown from a small family to an extended family with many young researchers. In the Netherlands, there were plenty of opportunities for young researchers to be initiated into the field but that was not the case in other European countries. I wanted to help these young researchers. To this end, I met several times with my own Ph.D. students and several young Dutch and Flemish researchers to draft a blueprint for an association of young researchers within the EARLI. I really enjoyed doing that, and I am proud to say that during my presidency the JURE was founded and is still a flourishing association within EARLI. During my career, I organized and took part in several summer schools for young researchers, and I consider working with these bright and enthusiastic young people as a real treat.

One of my most memorable experiences I had was becoming the president of EARLI and I was proud to become the president of this important organization.

Advice

Could you give us some valuable suggestions for future researchers?

Read the relevant literature thoroughly and use validated instruments rather than constructing new ones yourself. Don’t spend time re-inventing the wheel: build on the shoulders of senior researchers. It is better to be a well-equipped wagon pulled by a well-oiled engine than to try and be an engine too soon.

Also, if it is your ambition to advise and train teachers to change the classroom, it is necessary that you first train to be a teacher yourself so that you find out firsthand what is happening in the classroom. You will see that teachers will immediately identify you as somebody who is familiar with the teaching profession and with the complex world of the classroom. As such, they will communicate better with you, trust your opinion, and implement your findings.

I have often communicated to young researchers that organizing the social program of a conference well is just as important as organizing the scientific program well. I truly cared about the education of the next generation and I wish all young researchers an interesting and stimulating career as I had myself.

Martin Daumiller & Julia Morinaj

References

Bembenutty, H. (2015). Contemporary pioneers in teaching and learning. IAP.

Boekaerts, M. (2002). Motivation to learn. International Academy of Education.

Boekaerts, M., Zeidner, M., & Pintrich, P. R. (Eds.). (1999). Handbook of self-regulation. Elsevier.