In this blog post, I will elaborate on the application of the expectancy-value theory by Eccles and colleagues. This is a foundation theory in motivation and learning. I will describe this theory with the example of a reading intervention explained in the first part of this blog series. If you have not read part one, read it first.
Expectancy Beliefs and Value
When students believe they can accomplish the given task, and when they develop reasonably accurate perceptions of their competence, they are motivated to engage in the task (Expectancy-value theory; Eccles, 1993; 2005; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). However, in doing so, teachers need to communicate that students’ competence and skills are malleable (changeable) and will continue to develop on further practice. Moreover, students engage in a learning task when teachers offer rationales that explain the importance and utility of the task; model value and interest in the task; and activate personal interest through choice and control (Schunk et al., 2014).
A. Value: First, in our reading intervention, we began with a whole class discussion on why reading was important (values; Expectancy-Value Theory). Some of the students enjoyed reading intrinsically (interest value); however, some others did not enjoy reading much. Therefore, we discussed on the first day of the intervention why students should consider committing to this reading task and finishing it. We discussed that completing the reading resolution may help students improve their reading performance in the post-assessment (attainment value), and how better reading performance may help their future goals including academic progress and knowledge accumulation (utility value).
B. Expectancy Beliefs and Self-Perceptions of Competence: Next, we shared a realistic assessment of students’ current reading performance and ensured them that they can do better if they regularly engaged in reading tasks (expectancies; Expectancy-Value Theory). Instead of holding poor performance against the students and indulging in negative criticism, we decided to communicate to the students that they could improve their performance by engaging themselves in regular reading.
Further, we provided students with individual feedback on their pre-assessment scores and helped them set a mastery goal for themselves. This way, we decreased the amount of relative ability information that was publicly available to all the students in the class. This approach helps reduce social comparisons and protects the self-perception of competence for students performing less well on the task (Schunk et al., 2014).
C. Task-difficulty: Keeping tasks at a relatively challenging yet reasonable difficulty level supports student motivation (Schunk et al., 2014). Most students were not reading regularly; therefore, we set high expectations (reading 300 pages over a month) as implied in the expectancy-value theories. The task was set at a moderate difficulty level that involved reading every day (consistency) and attaining a cumulative higher goal (300 pages). However, we made it clear that the goal was attainable if broken down into smaller sub-goals (i.e., reading 10 pages a day). We used this proximal goal setting strategy, which is often used in self-regulated learning theories and consequently in the regulation of motivation strategies (Zimmerman, 2008; Wolters, 2003).
D. Choice: Students are more likely to engage in a task if they perceive a sense of control and choice in their learning (Expectancy-Value Theory). We allowed the students to not only choose the medium of language for their reading but also the books they would love reading. We emphasized that we were more interested in “reading” than “reading a particular set of books”. This afforded students ample opportunities to pick and choose their books, languages, and genres. Moreover, students had the autonomy to choose their definition of what counts as one page – small or large page size; small or large font size, and so on.
In this post, I focused on the expectancy-value theory. In the next post, I will discuss other aspects of the intervention and how we used some other motivation strategies in designing our reading intervention. Until then, stay safe, stay well.
Aakash Chowkase 