Engaged Participation versus Marginal Nonparticipation: A Stridently Sociocultural Approach to Acheivement Motivation

In recent years, some educational researchers who study motivation have been expanding their focus to consider the broader contexts of motivated activity. Sociocultural views of knowing and learning are an influential force in this movement. In this article I apply the sociocultural assumption that knowledge resides in contexts of its use to the study of achievement motivation. I then use this "participatory" view of knowing and learning to define a stridently sociocultural approach to "motivation-in-context." I contrast conventional behavioral and cognitive assumptions about engagement with the sociocultural notion of engaged participation in the coconstruction of standards and values in learning contexts. I also explore the complex issue of reconciliation between individual and social activity that is critical to contextual considerations of motivation. The conventional aggregative approach to reconciliation is compared to the dialectical approach that follows from a sociocultural perspective. Finally, I discuss the potential value of this model and approach in terms of the new perspective they offer for persistent education questions, such as use of extrinsic rewards to motivate engagement in learning.