The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement

K Ann Renninger, Suzanne Hidi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138779785
• eBook ISBN: 9781317674207
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement describes the benefits of interest for people of all ages. Using case material as illustrations, the volume explains that interest can be supported to develop, and that the development of a person's interest is always motivating and results in meaningful engagement. This volume is written for people who would like to know more about the power of their interests and how they could develop them: students who want to be engaged, educators and parents wondering about how to facilitate motivation, business people focusing on ways in which they could engage their employees and associates, policy-makers whose recognition of the power of interest may lead to changes resulting in a new focus supporting interest development for schools, out of school activity, industry, and business, and researchers studying learning and motivation. It draws on research in cognitive, developmental, educational, and social psychology, as well as in the learning sciences, and neuroscience to demonstrate that there is power for everyone in leveraging interest for motivation and engagement.

1 DEFINING INTEREST

What is interest and how has it been conceptualized and studied?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315771045-2

What is the definition of interest? A momentary fixation, attraction, fascination, or curiosity? A preference or an attitude? Love of learning or even a passion? A motivational belief or a trait-like characteristic? Is it an emotion? ¹ Until recently, academics have not been able to reach a consensus about how to define interest, because so many of these ways of describing interest seem to be intuitively correct. In order to avoid confusion about our definition, we specifically focus on interest and its development beginning with the initial triggering of attention and extending through to the formation of a well-developed individual interest. In the course of its development, interest is very likely to include or reflect all of the above definitions. ²

In our definition, interest has a dual meaning: it refers to the psychological state of a person while engaging with some type of content (e.g., mathematics, bass fishing, music) and also to the cognitive and affective motivational predisposition to reengage with that content over time. That is, interest is a psychological state and a motivational disposition that exists in, or is the product of, the interaction of people’s characteristics and their environment (see Figure 1.1). ³ Much of the research on interest focuses on one or the other of these two aspects of interest, although they have been, and perhaps should be, considered together.

Figure 1.1 The Dual Meaning of Interest: A Psychological State and a Motivational Variable.

A Psychological State and a Motivational Variable

Interest as a psychological state is grounded in a person’s physiological/neurological reactions to a wide range of things, including other people, objects, and tasks. Interest also describes a unique, content-specific, motivational variable that is responsible for the processes underlying how people act, feel, engage, and learn. ⁴ As a psychological state, interest is characterized by increased attention, effort, concentration, and affect during engagement. As a motivational variable, the term makes a distinction between shorter-term or situational interest and longer-term or individual interest, which is characterized by reengagement over time.

Two children who are playing chess and are in different phases of interest may be in the same psychological state but may differ in their predisposition to return to playing chess another time. Depending on available and competing opportunities, the child with less developed situational interest (triggered or maintained) may or may not continue to see opportunities to play. On the other hand, the child with more developed individual interest in chess (emerging or well-developed) will be motivated to return to play. ⁵

The two meanings of interest—as both a psychological state and as a motivational disposition—are interrelated. On one hand, if the psychological state of interest is generated, or triggered repeatedly, it may support the development of interest as a motivational variable. On the other hand, the level or phase of interest as a motivational variable determines the types of environmental supports (e.g., from other people and/or the design of tasks or opportunities) that are needed to enable the continued triggering and maintaining of the psychological state of interest.

Integral to the development of interest as a motivational variable are two types of interest: situational and individual. ⁶ Linked, they describe the potential trajectory of interest development in which situational interest may trigger and support the development of individual interest (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 A Case Example of a Triggered Situational Interest That Is Maintained.

Julia is in her last term of college. While nervously waiting for a medical appointment, she picks up and flips through a magazine. Her attention is drawn to an article about a man who is an engineer and who recently gave up his partnership in a successful consulting practice to become a facilitator. A facilitator is a person who tries to help people or groups resolve conflicts before they go to litigation. Julia likes the idea of working with people and wants to read more even though she has never heard of the occupation of facilitator before now. Meanwhile, she is called to meet the doctor. She carefully marks the page she is reading and leaves the magazine on the table. Following her appointment, she goes back to the table, finds the magazine, and sits down to finish reading the article.

Source: Hidi and Renninger 2006: 116.

They have also been studied separately. We consider each briefly and explain the links between them. We then provide detail about the four-phase model of interest development, which describes phases in interest development as including triggered situational, maintained situational, emerging individual, and well-developed individual interest. Following this, we review conceptualizations of interest in their historical contexts and discuss their implications for better understanding interest as a variable that develops.

Situational, Individual, and Topic Interest

Situational interest—also referred to as an early phase of interest development, or less developed interest—is a reaction to particular content or activity. It has an affective component that frequently is positive but can also involve negative feelings such as fear or disgust.⁷ Situational interest is characterized by focused attention to particular content and may be shorter-term (triggered situational interest) or may be maintained over a somewhat longer period of time (maintained situational interest).⁸ Two types of factors have been identified as characterizing situational interest:

1. structural characteristics such as novelty, surprise, complexity, and ambiguity;⁹
2. content features such as human activity, life themes, intensity, and personalization.¹⁰

These factors may naturally occur in the environment, can result from educators’ organization of school activities (e.g., hands-on activities)¹¹ or, in the case of older individuals, may be self-generated (e.g., with the intention of staying on task).¹² Linnenbrink-Garcia et al. (2010) have shown different aspects of the mathematics classroom can provide triggers: the presentation of course materials (triggered situational interest), students’ feelings about the materials as enjoyable or engaging (maintained situational interest feeling), and students’ perceptions of the materials’ importance (maintained situational interest value).¹³ Moreover, they reported that situational interest promoted change in the students’ individual interest over the school year.

Individual interest—also called a later phase of interest development, more developed interest, and/or personal interest—is a relatively enduring predisposition to reengage particular content over time. The repeated experience of the psychological state of interest predicts the likelihood of continued self-sustained engagement¹⁴ when opportunity is available,¹⁵ as well as the experience of flow.¹⁶ Typically, learners who have an emerging individual interest are invested and excited by their developing knowledge. When learners have a well-developed individual interest they are also likely to be concerned with the relation between their understanding and what others have said or may have figured out.¹⁷ Individual interest tends to develop slowly through repeated triggers from the environment that can be provided by other people¹⁸ or may be self-generated.¹⁹ Individual interest is associated with positive feelings as well as a recursive relation of knowledge and value for the content of interest. The development of knowledge contributes to the deepening of value, and, as value develops, it leads to continued engagement and yet more deepening of knowledge.²⁰

In addition to situational and individual interest, some researchers have studied topic interest (e.g., space travel).²¹ Topic interest is triggered by the presentation of topics and themes.²² This type of interest was considered to be a form of situational interest in some early studies,²³ while other investigators referred to topic interest as a form of individual interest.²⁴ Subsequently, Ainley et al. (2002) reported that topic interest can be influenced by both situational (e.g., a topic such as space travel is mentioned and people want to know about it) and individual factors (e.g., people have an already developed interest in space travel). Their research identified the contributions of both of these factors to the psychological state of interest that was triggered by four expository topics.

It is now clear that situational interest can be triggered in earlier as well as later phases of interest development. In fact, triggering occurs in each phase of interest, and when triggers “take,” interest can develop.²⁵ In earlier phases of interest, the person needs triggering to support engagement with the content. In later phases of interest, continued triggering of interest is necessary for the development of interest to continue. For example, a person’s interest can be triggered by novelty in early phases of interest development and also by novelty in later phases of interest development,²⁶ although what is novel or even comprehensible may be different for persons with less and more developed interest in a discipline.²⁷ Bergin (1999: 89) provided some good illustrations of how individuals may differ in the information they find novel and interesting:

What is an exciting filmed chase scene for most people, may be boring to the jaded film critic who has seen too many chase scenes. A fascinating magazine account of a war escape may be old news, and inaccurate to boot, to the teen war aficionado who has already read several detailed book-length accounts of the escape.²⁸

Initially, researchers studying interest did not see that situational and individual interest were linked. They did not recognize that the psychological state of interest could be the same for both situational and individual interest (as described in the example of the boy playing chess) and that the phase of a person’s interest would influence the level of his or her motivation. Rather, they thought that situational and individual interest were two different forms of interest. ²⁹ However, study findings emerged that led u...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustration
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Defining Interest
• 2 Interest, Attention, and Curiosity
• 3 Measuring Interest
• 4 Interest, Motivation, Engagement, and Other Motivational Variables
• 5 Interest and Content
• 6 Developing Interest
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index