Abstracts - Earli

tasks has been used with classes from fifth grade through to the senior years of high school. Ourfindings confirm interest is one of the important threads binding person, task and context toproduce effective learning.Returning to our roots: Reclaiming the “social” in motivation researchJulianne C. Turner, University of Notre Dame, USAHow does motivation develop and why does it change? These questions are both theoretically andpractically important. At the turn of the century Dewey declared that psychology was, by dint ofits study of human beings, fundamentally social. He proposed a "dual aspect" theory, in which the"social" and the "cognitive" are studied as integral parts of a single phenomenon. Since then, socialcognitive motivation research has developed its "cognitive" focus while neglecting or subsumingits "social" and situational aspects. Current motivation research examines social aspects ofexperience primarily through the cognitions of respondents, using mostly survey methodology.This approach is ill-suited to explaining development and change because it ignores their sourceswhile implying that respondents have conscious access to beliefs and that beliefs are fairly stable.The question "why" should be answered with the study of people in relationships (Gergen, 1985)Rogoff (1995) offers one theoretical approach which could be adapted to explain the situated anddevelopmental nature of motivation in social and historical contexts. It uses the heuristic ofanalyzing activity simultaneously on three planes. The personal plane focuses on how individualschange through their participation in an activity. The interpersonal plane focuses on the ways inwhich activities (and materials) are communicated and coordinated among individuals and howthey facilitate or hinder certain types of participation. The community plane focuses oninstitutional practices and cultural values which have developed over time. While not prescriptiveabout methodology, approaches similar to these can help us understand the social source ofmotivation and the holistic nature of the social and the cognitive over time.Motivation and emotion in context challenging research methodologiesPekka Salonen, University of Turku, FinlandMarja Vauras, University of Turku, FinlandRiitta Kinnunen, University of Turku, FinlandCurrent discussions and empirical evidence on developmental, learning-related interactionsbetween cognitive and metacognitive competence, motivation, emotion and social interaction hasever more put the social interaction in a spotlight in understanding the power of instruction and indesigning new pedagogical cultures. In order to understand individuals’ complex long-term andsocially embedded development, behavior and behavioral outcomes, researchers are challenged toreassess and refine the current methodologies. Conventional methodological approachesaddressing "static", unidirectional or linear relationships between isolated variables cannot providesufficient basis for understanding the complexity and bidirectional, non-linear dynamics andcumulative processes of behavior-in-context. In particular, when the ultimate goal is to reconstructlearning environments to fit all learners, and to help modify social, learning-related interactionsamong participants, methodologies that help us to gain a more holistic understanding onmotivation in learning is a necessity. In this presentation, we discuss the need and qualitativefeatures of multi-method research approaches, which include instruments to tap the complexity ofreal-life, dynamic and socially embedded human motivation, emotion and learning. It servesintegrative and context-driven theoretical views putting learning into a wider context of adaptationand functional relationships. Rigorous multi-method approach can help us to understand thelearner as a whole-person-in-context, i.e., as a person with learning processes and outcomes– 474 –