Correlational studies have provided profound evidence that motivational teaching be-haviors are promising for creating conditions under which students can motivate themselves (see Section 1.2). In this section, I explain that motivation interventions can do the same. Es-pecially in the past decade, classroom-based interventions that have been designed to boost students’ motivation have been developed, implemented, and often (successfully) tested (for overviews, see Hulleman et al., 2016; Karabenick & Urdan, 2014; Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016; Rosenzweig & Wigfield, 2016). Thus, such interventions are other factors in the educa-tional setting that accompany motivaeduca-tional teaching behaviors and can affect their impact on students’ motivation.
In the following, I first provide an overview of successfully tested so-called relevance interventions (Priniski et al., 2018) that can be integrated into a broader category of motivation interventions. Second, to understand the processes initiated by such interventions, I elucidate relevant components and mechanisms of an exemplary relevance intervention. Finally, I pursue the question of how processes initiated by motivational teaching behaviors during regular in-struction and relevance interventions, which accompany regular motivational teaching behav-iors in the educational setting, potentially interact.
Classroom-Based Relevance Interventions
Only a few years ago, Lazowski and Hulleman (2016) evaluated theory-based motiva-tion intervenmotiva-tions that were aimed at fostering “authentic” educamotiva-tional outcomes (e.g., achieve-ment or motivation) in natural settings and found an average effect size of 0.49. However, in an introductory statement to their meta-analysis, Lazowski and Hulleman claimed that “over the past two decades, intervention research in the field of education has been on the decline”
(p. 602). They substantiated their claim by meta-analyzing 74 published and unpublished pa-pers of 92 field studies spanning a time period of 38 years (from 1976 to 2014), whereas most of the studies they considered stemmed from the first half of this period (rather than from the second half or uniformly spread). Whether or not this was a reaction to Lazowski and Hulleman’s critique on the decline in the number of attempts to test motivation theory experi-mentally in the two decades before their meta-analysis, an overwhelming number of interven-tion studies that have been aimed at fostering student motivainterven-tion has been published in the years since Lazowski and Hulleman’s meta-analysis. This large number of studies offers con-vincing evidence for the success of many interventions, particularly those based on situated expectancy-value theory (to name some of them, e.g., Canning et al., 2018, 2019; Canning &
Harackiewicz, 2015; Durik et al., 2018; Durik, Shechter, et al., 2015; Gaspard et al., 2020;
Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Schreier, et al., 2015; Harackiewicz, Canning, et al., 2016; Hecht et al., 2020; Hulleman et al., 2017; Kosovich et al., 2019; Lindeman et al., 2018; Priniski et al., 2019; Rosenzweig et al., 2020; Rosenzweig, Harackiewicz, et al., 2019; Rosenzweig, Hulleman, et al., 2019; Shin et al., 2019—17 unique studies within the last 5 years alone, whereas this list of exemplary studies is not exhaustive).
One of the major accomplishments of motivation intervention studies is that they have provided evidence that the promotion of students’ relevance perceptions can lead to an en-hancement of subsequent interest in and motivation to engage with the subject matter (e.g., Brisson et al., 2017; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015; Harackiewicz, Smith, et
al., 2016; Hecht et al., 2020; Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009; for overviews, see also Durik, Hulleman, et al., 2015; Harackiewicz & Priniski, 2018; and Rosenzweig & Wigfield, 2016).
For motivation interventions that have explicitly focused on the relevance for students, the umbrella term relevance intervention is often used (e.g., Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015; though in the literature, other terms such as value-reappraisal interventions or utility-value interventions are also common; e.g., Acee & Weinstein, 2010; Harackiewicz, Canning, et al., 2016; see also Priniski et al., 2018, for an overview). Relevance interventions seek to help participants see a connection between the subject matter or a task and their personal lives.
Historically, relevance interventions can be divided into two different approaches: either di-rectly communicating the relevance of a task (e.g., Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007; Vansteenkiste et al., 2004, Studies 1 and 2) or encouraging students to self-generate personal connections (e.g., Hulleman et al., 2010; Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009). Both attempts have been tested successfully in the laboratory, and these laboratory studies have provided a solid starting point for moving research on relevance interventions into the field (e.g., Hulleman & Cordray, 2009), where they were found to positively affect, for instance, high-school students’ autonomous motivation, interest, grades, and test performance (e.g., Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009;
Vansteenkiste et al., 2004, Study 3). Similar results were obtained from investigations of col-lege students (e.g., Canning et al., 2018; Harackiewicz, Canning, et al., 2016; Hecht et al., 2019; Hulleman et al., 2010, Study 2, 2017, Study 2; Priniski et al., 2019; Reeve et al., 2002;
Rosenzweig et al., 2020; Rosenzweig, Harackiewicz, et al., 2019; Vansteenkiste et al., 2004, Studies 1 and 2).
Along with a multitude of other relevance interventions, the intervention “motivation in mathematics” (MoMa) was developed by combining and refining promising aspects of pre-vious approaches (e.g., Acee & Weinstein, 2010; Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015; Durik, Shechter, et al., 2015; Hulleman et al., 2010; Hulleman & Cordray, 2009; Hulleman &
Harackiewicz, 2009). The MoMa intervention was aimed at boosting students’ task values and was designed as a 90-min session that took place during regular classes in ninth-grade math classrooms. It combined the provision and the self-generation of relevance arguments as this has been shown to be particularly effective (e.g., Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015). The MoMa intervention played a prominent role in the subsequent dissertation, which is why I present it in more detail in the following.
This 90-min relevance intervention comes in two parts. The first part comprises a psy-choeducational presentation with information on the roles of effort, talent, and self-concept (as
previous interventions have worked best when participants thought they were able to complete the target task; e.g., Durik, Shechter, et al., 2015) and on different frame-of-reference effects (as previous research has indicated the important role of social and temporal comparisons;
Möller & Marsh, 2013; Trautwein & Möller, 2016; Wolff et al., 2018). Additionally, an in-structor highlights the relevance of math for a broader range of potential study majors, voca-tional trainings, and jobs. In the second half of the 90-min relevance intervention, students work individually on relevance-inducing tasks. In its original version, there were two different implementations of the intervention, which resulted in two different intervention conditions. In the first condition, students were asked to write an essay on why math could be relevant for themselves (text condition); in the second condition, students were asked to read and evaluate six written quotations on the relevance of math from young adults (quotations condition;
Brisson et al., 2017; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015). In a later update on the MoMa intervention (Gaspard et al., 2020; Piesch et al., 2020), the text condition was skipped because, on average, it had been found to be less effective than the quotations condition in promoting students’ motivation (Brisson et al., 2017; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015; but see Nagengast et al., 2017).
The efficacy and effectiveness (see Gottfredson et al., 2015, for the difference) of the MoMa intervention have been tested in two cluster-randomized controlled field trials (MoMa 1, Brisson et al., 2017; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015; and MoMa 2, Gaspard et al., 2020; Piesch et al., 2020). In both cases, two intervention conditions (text vs. quotations in MoMa 1; quotations implemented by the regular math teacher vs. by trained master’s stu-dents in MoMa 2) were tested against a waitlist control condition. Classes that were randomly assigned to the waitlist control condition experienced business as usual while the intervention was implemented in the intervention condition classrooms. Yet, to provide fairness across con-ditions, the classrooms from the waitlist control condition received the intervention after the data had been collected. Results of the two cluster-randomized controlled field trials showed that classes in the intervention conditions reported higher average utility value in comparison with the waitlist control classes (in both studies consistent across all intervention conditions and in part up until 5 months after the intervention; Gaspard et al., 2020; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015). Additionally, in the MoMa 1 study, students reported higher attainment value, intrinsic value, and self-concept and had better math test scores when exposed to the quotations condition compared with students in the waitlist control condition up to 5 months after the intervention (Brisson et al., 2017; Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al.,
2015). By and large, students with higher conscientiousness and higher math-related prior val-ues and achievement as well as girls (compared with boys) were more responsive to the rele-vance task in the MoMa 1 study (Brisson et al., 2020). Accordingly, stronger effects were found for female students than for male students (Gaspard, Dicke, Flunger, Brisson, et al., 2015). In the MoMa 2 study, and in contrast to MoMa 1, students who experienced the intervention sur-prisingly also reported higher subjective cost and in part reported enjoying math less compared with the waitlist control students (Gaspard et al., 2020).
Setting off Psychological Processes with the MoMa Intervention
Setting the unintended, negative side effects in the MoMa 2 study aside (on cost and intrinsic value) and concentrating on the primary outcome (utility value), the question that arises is: How was it possible that such a brief, minimally invasive relevance intervention such as the MoMa intervention was able to have such long-lasting effects (in part up to 5 months after the intervention)? Overall, the MoMa intervention focused on the personal relevance of math for students (in general and not limited to concrete tasks), particularly for their current and future education as well as for their future career paths. Thus, the MoMa intervention is an example of social-psychological interventions that target students’ psychology rather than ac-ademic content (also referred to as “wise” interventions, Yeager & Walton, 2011). By linking math on an abstract level with students’ potential goals and needs (through its psychoeduca-tional presentation and relevance-inducing tasks), the MoMa intervention might have been able to inspire a “eureka moment” (i.e., an abrupt realization of such links) in the students, thereby changing the way students perceive and understand math, themselves (e.g., their individual goals), and their interrelatedness. Derived from SDT, however, such a change in students’ rel-atively fixed attitudes toward and motivation to do math can only be achieved by paving the way by targeting students’ inherent basic needs (need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness; see Section 1.1.2 and, e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2017). This may have been the case through several mechanisms the MoMa intervention initiates. First, the MoMa intervention might target students’ need for autonomy by referring to a broad spectrum of study majors, vocational training programs, and jobs; by providing students with choices when evaluating the quotations or by writing down self-generated relevance arguments; by aiming to stress the self-relevance of math for the students; and even by the pure fact that the teachers apparently aimed to support their students by participating in such an intervention program. Second, the MoMa intervention might target students’ competence perceptions by emphasizing the rele-vance of temporal references (instead of, e.g., social references), and by drawing their attention
to the relevance of their own effort (instead of talent) as a determinant of performance (“eve-ryone can become better in math independent of one’s talent”). As a consequence, students may feel an actual satisfaction of their need for competence. Finally, the MoMa intervention utilizes not only instructor-focused presentations and relevance-inducing tasks students are supposed to work on individually; students are also encouraged to share their opinions and feelings about math and to discuss their perspectives on the presented material. Thus, the MoMa intervention may also address students’ inherent need for relatedness. By satisfying the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, the MoMa intervention might have been able to prepare students to absorb the intervention message and to appreciate the arguments that were presented about how math is self-relevant.
Addressing such basic psychological processes is the core concern of social-psycho-logical interventions, even though the underlying mechanisms and processes are not always evident. The challenge of such interventions, however, is that participants must meet certain psychological criteria (Binning & Browman, 2020). For instance, regarding the MoMa inter-vention, some students could already have been aware of the direct applicability of the subject matter for potential study majors or careers (i.e., they would not experience a “eureka moment”
and would thus consequently also not experience an effect of the intervention), or the provided rationales might not apply to their individual career goals (i.e., they would potentially not see self-relevance in the intervention messages). Interventions other than MoMa might aim to tar-get and change students’ growth mindset (e.g., Yeager et al., 2019) or sense of belonging (e.g., Walton & Cohen, 2011), which would not work if the targeted students had already internalized the message (My brain is “like a muscle” that can grow, e.g., Blackwell et al., 2007), or if there had been no socially marginalized groups that needed an intervention, respectively. Thus, the efficacy of social-psychological interventions such as the MoMa intervention are conditional, and heterogeneous effects are very likely (Binning & Browman, 2020).
A Question of “Seed” and “Soil”
Similar processes as described in the previous section are targeted when teachers teach in a motivating way during regular class. More precisely, in Section 1.1.3, I derived from self-determination theory that teaching behaviors that tie rationales to students’ subjective perspec-tives (to support their perceptions of self-relevance) and that support students’ basic psycho-logical needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the most promising for supporting students’ motivation. In Section 1.2, I introduced corresponding motivational teaching behav-iors, namely, autonomy support, the provision of meaningful rationales via the use of everyday
life examples, the nurturing of students’ inner motivational resources via enthusiastic teaching, and the acknowledgment of perspectives and feelings via emotional support. When teachers taught in such a way that supported students’ needs, their students reported higher motivation (for a review, see Stroet et al., 2013). Similar strategies were used in the MoMa intervention in which the instructors tackled students’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in different ways, for instance, by referencing the usefulness of math for students’ potentially concrete career goals, by triggering high competence perceptions, and by getting students to interact with each other. By and large, relevance interventions such as the MoMa intervention were found to be successful at promoting student outcomes (for an overview, see Priniski et al., 2018). Consequently, relevance interventions such as the MoMa intervention and motiva-tional teaching behaviors equally bear the potential to support students’ motivation and achievement. However, this inevitably raises the question of how these two supportive ap-proaches are jointly related to student motivation. Can interventions add to the potentially cu-mulative positive effects of motivational teaching behaviors during regular class? Can inter-ventions at least potentially compensate for negative teaching behaviors? Or do interinter-ventions ultimately undermine the positive effects of regular class by “overdoing” positive intentions?
In one way or another, all of these questions address the concern of the extent to which class-room-based social-psychological interventions interact with regular motivational teaching be-haviors in school or whether such social-psychological interventions work independently of the context they are implemented in (Kaplan et al., 2020).
In educational intervention research, scholars started addressing such potential interde-pendencies of the social context in school and intervention effects through the metaphor of
“seed” and “soil” (e.g., Gueron, 2002; Walton & Yeager, 2020). Interventions are viewed as seeds that are sown in soil (the context); when an intervention metaphorically grows into good plants (outcomes), the intervention is seen as successful. However, as is always the case with cultivation, growth is a question of soil quality and harvesting. Consequently, Gueron (2002) stated:
There is soil that is more or less fertile and some that should be off-limits, but, to con-tinue the metaphor, the key to success lies in how one tills the soil and does the hard work of planting and harvesting. One has to understand the context and clear away potential land mines. (p. 17)
In the same vein, Walton and Yeager (2020) explained that the efficacy of a social-psycholog-ical intervention is contingent upon contextual features that afford the assimilation of the in-tervention message (labeled psychological affordances). They argue that a context has to be
“fertile” in the sense that it affords the proffered belief system that is also being addressed through the intervention. For instance, growth-mindset interventions were found to work best in contexts comprising peers or teachers with a corresponding mindset (Yeager et al., 2019) and a social-belonging intervention in contexts in which the general perception of belonging is low (Walton et al., 2020). Transferring the assumptions of “fertile” soil to conditions for suc-cessful relevance interventions, educational contexts would have to afford the endorsement of the importance, utility, and relevance of math while simultaneously addressing students’ inher-ent needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (as outlined in the previous section).
Taking the metaphor of seed and soil a little further, one can also open up a discussion about the quality of beneficial soil: Is it really “fertile” soil that affords success for a social-psychological intervention; or is it rather “parched” soil that craves water (i.e., some kind of input)? For instance, Rosenzweig and Wigfield (2016) stated that if teachers frequently used motivational teaching behaviors during instruction, “an intervention might have less of an ef-fect than it would in classrooms where teachers do not provide any support for this construct”
(p. 158)—and correspondingly, the opposite could be true if teachers barely used such practices (for similar reasoning, see Acee & Weinstein, 2010). Analogously, Pinger and colleagues (2018) concluded from their investigation of a formative assessment intervention (though this was an instructional rather than a social-psychological intervention) that this intervention could compensate for low-quality regular instruction in terms of process orientation and effective time use. However, more research on the interrelatedness of relevance interventions and moti-vational teaching behaviors is scarce if it exists at all.
In the current section, I explained that relevance interventions have demonstrated suc-cess in promoting students’ motivation. In addition to motivational teaching behaviors during regular instruction, such relevance interventions may thus also be able to create conditions under which students motivate themselves. I argued that the processes that are initiated by a relevance intervention (e.g., MoMa) do not seem so different from the processes that are initi-ated by motivational teaching behaviors after all. Given their overlap, there is a clear need to investigate the interrelatedness of classroom-based relevance interventions and motivational teaching behaviors during regular instruction. If an intervention were to add to the positive effects of motivational teaching behaviors, this would be indicative of how motivational teach-ing behaviors could come into effect (even more). Such an investigation could thus clarify whether relevance interventions can boost motivational teaching behaviors that are already
present, or whether they can at least compensate for a lack thereof.6 I thus address this gap in this dissertation (see Chapter 5).
6 Interactions such as the one described between relevance interventions and motivational teaching be-haviors can always be approached from two sides of the story. For instance, the question “Can a relevance inter-vention boost or compensate for (a lack of) motivational teaching behaviors?” can be translated into the question
“Does a relevance intervention work equally well irrespective of the motivational teaching behaviors students are exposed to during regular class?” A corresponding analysis provides evidence that supports both questions and, for instance, can be interpreted either from the perspective of a practitioner seeking additional support from the regular motivating potential during class or from the perspective of a politician who wants to know whether a newly developed relevance intervention can be implemented in every classroom without hesitation.