Allan Wigfield
Korea University · Psychology
About the Lab
Professor Allan Wigfield's research lab focuses on the development of children's motivation, engagement, and self-perceptions in academic and extracurricular domains. The lab investigates how students' beliefs about their competence, subjective task value, and intrinsic motivation evolve over time, particularly during critical transitions such as moving from elementary to middle school. Research also examines the socialization of motivation within families and schools, with a strong emphasis on expectancy-value theory and its application to reading and academic achievement. The lab's work highlights the multidimensional nature of motivation and its impact on learning behaviors, including reading volume and breadth.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Selected Papers
15In this chapter we review work on the development of achievement motivation, focusing primarily on motivation for achievement in school. The chapter begins with a presentation of major current theories of achievement motivation. We then discuss research on the development of children's achievement motivation across the childhood and adolescent years, with special attention paid to gender differences in motivation and the role of culture, ethnicity, and immigration in influencing the development
The authors explored different aspects of children's reading motivation and how children's motivation related to the amount and breadth of their reading. The reading motives assessed included self-efficacy, intrinsic-extrinsic motivation and goals, and social aspects. Fourth- and 5th-grade children (N = 105) completed a new reading motivation questionnaire twice during a school year. Children's reading amount and breadth were measured using diaries and questionnaires. Children's reading motivati
The authors assessed change over 3 years in elementary school children's competence beliefs and subjective task value in the domains of math, reading, instrumental music, and sports. The longitudinal sample consisted of approximately 615 mostly White, lower middle to middle-class children. Stability correlations indicated moderate to strong stability in children's beliefs, especially older children's competence beliefs. The relation of children's ratings of their competence in each domain to est
Young adolescents' (N=1,850) achievement self-perceptions in 4 activity domains (math, English, social acitivities, and sports) and self-esteem were examined across the transition from elementary to junior high school
Abstract In this chapter we review the research on the development of children's motivation and engagement. We organize our review into four major sections: the development of children's achievement motivation; gender, cultural, and ethnic differences in children's motivation; socialization of motivation in the family; and socialization of motivation in school. We take a social‐cognitive expectancy‐value theoretical perspective to organize our discussion of this work. We first discuss the develo
The authors discuss the nature and domain specificity of reading motivation and present initial results that examined how 2 reading instructional programs, Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) and multiple Strategy Instruction (SI), influenced 3rd-grade children's intrinsic motivation to read and reading self-efficacy. Each reading program occurred during the fall of the school year and lasted 12 weeks. Approximately 150 3rd-grade children participated in CORI; 200 3rd-grade children part
AbstractI discuss research on the nature of motivation in the domain of reading, making a case for the need to examine the domain specificity of motivational constructs. After a review of relevant motivation theory and research, I describe the development of a questionnaire measure of reading motivation and summarize the results of 2 studies that utilized the questionnaire. From the studies' results, it is clear that children's reading motivation is multidimensional and that it relates to both t
Abstract The engagement model of reading development suggests that instruction improves students' reading comprehension to the extent that it increases students' engagement processes in reading. We compared how Concept‐Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) (support for cognitive and motivational processes in reading), strategy instruction (support for cognitive strategies in reading), and traditional instruction in fourth‐grade classrooms differentially influenced students' reading comprehension,
Research Areas
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