Social influences of interest: Conceptualizing group differences in education through a self-regulation of motivation model

Abstract

Understanding group-based inequalities in education requires attention not only to performance and achievement outcomes, but also to whether and how students sustain motivation for their educational and career paths over long periods of time. The self-regulation of motivation (SRM) model describes how students’ choices to persist are driven by the dynamic interaction between goals-defined motivation, which typically guides choices to start or reengage in an activity, and experience-defined motivation (or interest), which becomes a proximal predictor of persistence once engaged in the activity. Social influences can shape both kinds of motivations in ways that systematically contribute to differences in student persistence across groups and in how people self-regulate motivation. In this paper, we detail the ways in which social roles and group norms, interpersonal bias, and institutional structural barriers can shape motivational experiences and persistence of underrepresented groups of students through several specified processes within the SRM model. We describe how the model might illumine underlying causes of differential participation rates in certain fields, and we discuss key directions for future research.