Motivation and Identity

Students' identities influence their motivation in school. Consider some of the identities of a student: athletic, good at math, sister, college student, Black. How might these identities affect that student's motivation? A recent example from social media indicates how social identity shapes students' experiences and behaviors. In 2013, University of Michigan students expressed their experiences using the social media service Twitter with tweets that included the hash tag "BBUM" -"Being Black at the University of Michigan" (Woodhouse, 2013). These experiences included responding to racial stereotypes by working harder (e.g., "Having to work ten times as hard as other students because you're expected to fail"), trying to avoid failure (e.g., "NOT raising your hand in class because you do not want to be THAT black person who just doesn't get it ... "),and feeling a lack of belonging (e.g., "the only black person in the room half of the time"). These comments show how students' racial identities (and corresponding stereotypes about their social groups) can impact their motivation in school in a variety of important ways. The current chapter examines students' identities and how they shape and are shaped by motivation. By identity, we mean the collection of personal and social attributes held by all individuals that differentiate them and connect them to others (Brewer, 1991), including who students are and who they do and do not want to be. We consider motivation from a social cognitive perspective (Dweck & Leggett, 1988) to be an interconnected pattern of responses energizing individuals toward particular tasks or activities (see Pintrich, 2003); these patterns involve cognitions (beliefs about efficacy, mindsets, goals, attributions, etc.), behavior (persistence, effort, choice, etc.), and affective responses. In the sections that follow, we discuss two primary types of identity: individual and social identity. We then analyze how social identities influence motivation, including both minimal socia.J. identities (as created in laboratory settings) and real-world social identities (e.g., gender and race). We discuss stereotypes about ability and the threat of being judged by others due to negative stereotypes. We then describe how basic research on identity and motivation translates into powerful interventions to improve students' motivation for learning. We describe specific interventions that provide feedback communicating high standards, teach growth mindsets, reduce uncertainty about belonging, and allow students to affirm