Abstracts - Earli

strongly dependent not only on cognitive and metacognitive skills but also on socio-emotionalgoals, motivations and coping tendencies interacting with the affordances and constraints of thelearning environments. The use and value of multi-method approach in interpreting motivation andemotion is demonstrated with a case of a female student. Finally, we briefly discuss the promise ofnew methodologies and digital technologies, which may importantly widen our possibilities for indepthanalyses of real-life motivation and emotion.Studying motivational dynamics within and across socially challenging learning activities:Grappling with methodological implicationsSimone Volet, Murdoch University, AustraliaThe shift towards conceptualizing motivation as dynamic, social and situated has created majormethodological challenges for researchers in learning and instruction. Studies of motivation inreal-life, dynamic and interactive learning environments have provided empirical evidence thatmotivated engagement can change in form and intensity over the duration of an activity.Depending on the theoretical perspective, evidence of change as the activity unfolds can beexplained as adaptive self-regulation in context (socio-cognitive) or alternatively in relation toemerging new affordances and constraints for participation (sociocultural). Since group membersrepresent each other’s social learning environment, it is argued that motivational dynamics shouldbe examined at both individual and group level, and should also take into account broaderhistorical and sociocultural personal and contextual aspects. Furthermore, a focus on motivationaldynamics requires the examination of how changing contexts reciprocally shape individualadaptation. This raises a number of conceptual questions with methodological implications. Forexample, what patterns of motivational dynamics can be identified within and across sociallychallenging learning situations, and what research methodologies are best suited to identify andexplain such patterns? The presentation will discuss some methodological challenges in the studyof motivational dynamics within and across socially challenging learning activities with referenceto a set of empirical studies that combine longitudinal and multiple contexts research designs.I 230 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 0.83 EötvösSIG Invited SymposiumFrom phenomenography to variation theoryChair: Mona Holmqvist, Kristianstad University, SwedenOrganiser: Ming Fai Pang, The University of Hong Kong, Hong KongOrganiser: Mona Holmqvist, Kristianstad University, SwedenDiscussant: Yrjö Engeström, University of Helsinki, FinlandThe phenomenographic movement began by investigating students’ differences in learning andvariation in people’s ways of experiencing. This led to the "new" phenomenography, whose aimwas to characterise particular ways of experiencing with the use of the theory of variation.Recently, this theory has been extended todescribe and analyse classroom teaching, as well as todesign learning environments which create specific patterns of variation in order to bring aboutlearning. This symposium aims at documenting and deliberating the various developments of– 475 –