Situated Motivation and Action: A Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective on a Preservice Teacher’s Action While Facilitating a Discussion

Researchers have increasingly investigated the relations between teacher motivation and teacher actions; however, like most motivation research, teacher motivation studies commonly focus on independent relations between motivational and action constructs. Such studies reveal little about the complex motivational processes that underlie teachers’ situated behavior. The current study investigated the motivational processes undergirding one preservice teacher’s situated, moment-by-moment actions while teaching an inquiry lesson in a high school history classroom. Guided by the Dynamics Systems Model of Role Identity theoretical framework, we analyzed video and written-reflection data. Results suggested that the preservice teacher’s emergent actions were framed by her shifting role identity within the classroom’s changing cultural activity system. These findings highlight the complex, dynamic, and socially-situated interplay of the motivational processes that undergird the preservice teacher’s unfolding specific instructional actions. The findings support a view of situated actions emerging from the role identities of agents within a particular cultural activity system. We discuss the implications of this perspective for motivational theory, research, and practice.