Student Experience Research Network Blog

Scientific evidence has demonstrated the critical role educators play in shaping students’ psychological experience of school, which in turn affects students’ academic motivation, engagement, and outcomes. Given the potential of teacher preparation programs to influence generations of educators, the Student Experience Research Network set out to examine how insights from the social psychology of motivation are being incorporated into their curricula.

Broadly, the aim of this project was to understand how the scientific community and organizations that bridge research and practice might be able to support teacher preparation stakeholders in utilizing this research, and to gather questions and insights from these stakeholders that could inform future research.

Our report, Training new teachers to understand motivation in the classroom: How teacher preparation programs are educating teachers on the pedagogical implications of the social psychology of motivation, summarizes findings from a series of interviews and focus groups on this topic.

We conducted interviews with faculty and administrators at schools of education, residency and teacher induction programs, and intermediaries that support these entities. The report describes how the social psychology of motivation is currently being integrated into programs and identifies challenges and opportunities for more widespread integration.

We are excited to release this report and, importantly, to highlight the questions it raises for the field about how to best prepare educators to create psychologically safe, meaningful, and inclusive learning environments for all students.

If you’d like to read more about how educators can create environments that support motivation and engagement, take a look at the following related publications:

You may also enjoy these posts from Education Week’s Classroom Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo co-authored by members of the Student Experience Research Network:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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