RESEARCH STATEMENT
Research suggests that only 25% of the variability in children's achievement outcomes can be accounted for by their scores on tests of intelligence. A likely source of some of the additional variability is the specific self-evaluative and motivational beliefs that students bring to the learning context: How well do I expect to perform in mathematics? How talented am I in science and is it important for me to do well in this subject? How long must I persist on a difficult problem, and how will I feel about giving up? The central goal of my research has been to uncover the source of children's self-evaluative and motivational beliefs. My most recent work has focused on examining the role that significant others, particularly peers, play in socializing these beliefs. I am also interested in examining how self-evaluative and motivational beliefs are influenced by instructional contexts and how these beliefs vary developmentally and by gender.
The
Socialization of Self-Evaluative and Motivational Beliefs
In her controversial book, The
Nurture Assumption, Judith Harris (1999) suggests that parents have no long-term
effects on children's personality development. Instead, she concludes,
children are socialized primarily by other children. Many have argued that Harris's
claims are overstated. At the same time, her work is valuable insofar
as it highlights the often-ignored role that peers play as agents of
socialization. In my own research, I focus on understanding the role that peers
play in socializing children's self-evaluative and motivational beliefs,
particularly in academic contexts.
I
began this program of research with basic questions regarding whether peers play
a role in shaping children's achievement-related beliefs and academic
outcomes. To address this issue, Dr. Eva Pomerantz and I conducted two studies
to examine whether changes over time in children's self-evaluative and
motivational beliefs could be predicted from friends' beliefs (Altermatt &
Pomerantz, 2003c) or from friends' academic performance (Altermatt & Pomerantz, 2005). For three semesters, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students
(N = 929) completed questionnaire measures of their achievement-related beliefs
and friendship choices. Children's report card grades were also obtained. The
results reported in Altermatt and Pomerantz (2003c) indicate that, over time,
children adjust their attributional styles as well as their assessments of the
importance of meeting academic standards to more closely match those of friends.
In Altermatt and Pomerantz (2005), we show that, for low-achievers, there are
tradeoffs associated with establishing friendships with high-achieving
classmates. Specifically, low-achievers with high-achieving friends evaluate
themselves less positively, but also perform better academically, than
low-achievers with similarly low-achieving friends. Together, these results
provide preliminary evidence that peers (and, particularly, friends) are
influential with regard to children's achievement-related beliefs. These
findings complement a more well-developed literature suggesting that parents
play a role in shaping children's achievement-related outcomes.
In
the second phase of this program of research, I began to examine how
children's social interactions with peers contribute to the development of
positive achievement-related beliefs. In Altermatt, Pomerantz, Ruble, Frey, and
Greulich (2002), the conversations that kindergarten, first-grade, and
second-grade students had with classmates were observed during independent work
time. My colleagues and I proposed that changes in children's self-perceptions
of academic competence could be predicted from the types of evaluative discourse
in which they engaged. Indeed, the results indicated that changes in
children's competence perceptions were predicted by the frequency with which
children evaluated themselves positively (e.g., "I'm a good reader.") and
negatively (e.g., "I'm only on number 4.") in the presence of classmates
as well as by the levels of help-seeking and help-giving in which they
participated. These findings are important insofar as they indicate that changes
in children's achievement-related beliefs can be predicted from the
characteristics of children's social interactions with peers.
These studies have been important in demonstrating that peers play a significant role in the development of self-evaluative and motivational beliefs and in providing initial evidence that children's discourse can offer a window on to the processes of peer socialization. At the same time, much remains to be learned about how children's interactions with peers contribute to the development of positive school attitudes and outcomes. Given evidence that children's responses to failure are key predictors of their long-term educational and occupational choices, an important goal of two of my newest projects is to examine how peers, as well as parents, help children cope with everyday academic challenges. The first project (funded by NSF grant BCS-0236678) is laboratory-based and is designed to examine the role that children's interactions with friends play in predicting adaptive (i.e., mastery-oriented) versus maladaptive (i.e., learned helpless) responses to academic failure. The second project is a "daily diary" study designed to examine how early adolescents' daily interactions with parents and peers following everyday successes (e.g., getting an "A" on a test) and failures (e.g., answering a question incorrectly in class) contribute to changes in school adjustment over time. These new projects combine my research interests in achievement motivation, peer relationships, social support, coping, and resilience and have resulted in several presentations to date (e.g., Altermatt, Broady, & Bellgard, 2007; Altermatt, Mosher, & Brody, 2005; Altermatt & Kamplain, 2004; Altermatt, Kim, Mosher, & Swartz, 2004). The first publication from these data is currently in press (Altermatt, 2007).
The
Impact of Instructional Contexts on Self-Evaluation and Motivation
Of
course, peers are not alone in influencing children's achievement-related
behaviors, beliefs, and outcomes. In fact, a central aim of both developmental
and educational psychologists has been to examine the role that teachers and the
classroom context play in this regard. As a beginning graduate student in
educational psychology, I became involved in two projects specifically aimed at
examining the impact of instructional contexts on children's academic
outcomes. In my work with Dr. Jenny Singleton, I compared the narrative
sophistication of deaf students who attended schools that advocated the use of
American Sign Language (ASL) with those that favored instruction in Signed
English. In my work with Dr. Michelle Perry, I explored first-grade teachers'
changing use of questions and autonomy-granting behaviors as they adopted a new
reformed mathematics curriculum.
My
interest in instructional contexts is particularly evident in my master's
thesis work. One claim drawn from the teacher socialization literature, if
not in empirical circles then at least in the popular media, is that the
diminished performance and self-evaluations of females and low achievers can, in
part, be explained by teachers' biased questioning practices which provide
more opportunities to males and to high-achieving students. In research with Dr.
Jasna Jovanovic and Dr. Michelle Perry (Altermatt, Jovanovic, & Perry,
1998), I question this assumption and provide evidence that while teachers may
direct more of their questions to males than to females, this pattern of
questioning does not necessarily reflect a teacher bias against girls. Instead,
our analyses indicate that teachers are responding to the heightened
volunteering rates of their male students. These findings suggest that, by
adolescence, both teachers and students play a role in maintaining sex
differences in the classroom question-asking context.
Developmental
and Sex Differences in Self-Evaluation and Motivation
In addition
to exploring the contexts in which children's achievement attitudes and
outcomes are socialized, researchers have been interested in examining how these
processes vary, both developmentally and by sex. Research has consistently
shown that as children proceed through elementary school and into junior high
school, attitudes toward school become more negative, self-esteem drops, and
expectations for future success diminish. There is some evidence that these
declines are particularly strong among female students. A central focus of my
work has been to uncover the source of these developmental and sex differences.
In my master's thesis work (Altermatt et al., 1998), I provide evidence that
both teachers and students contribute to a classroom environment that may prove
inimical to girls' self-evaluations. In our commentary on Carver and
Scheier's model of self-regulation, Dr. Eva Pomerantz and I (Pomerantz & Altermatt, 1999) suggest that social developmental changes (e.g., children's
changing conceptions of ability) are likely to underlie developmental changes in
children's ability to effectively regulate their own behavior in order to meet
self-improvement goals. In my dissertation research (Altermatt et al., 2002), I provide evidence that children's classroom discourse may help to
explain both developmental and sex-related differences in children's
self-perceptions of competence.
A key to understanding
developmental and sex differences in achievement-related processes is uncovering
the contexts in which they are likely to occur. This is, in fact, the central
goal of a meta-analysis Dr. Eva Pomerantz and I are presently conducting (Altermatt & Pomerantz, 2004). Compared to males, females often display low levels of
self-confidence, hold diminished expectations for success, and make debilitating
attributions for their achievement outcomes. Moreover, females appear to hold
these debilitating beliefs despite the fact that they outperform boys
academically (Altermatt & Pomerantz, 2002a, 2002b; Pomerantz, Altermatt, & Saxon, 2002). Our meta-analysis represents the first systematic effort to
determine whether these sex differences are apparent across both success and
failure situations and to specify the particular contexts that are most likely
to elicit differential reactions from males and females.
Future
Directions and Opportunities for Student Collaboration
The studies
described above provide the foundation for my future work. I am especially
interested in continuing to examine the role that everyday interactions with
parents, teachers, and peers play in children's and adolescents' social and
school adjustment. Given the well-documented difficulties that students
encounter when making the transition from elementary school to junior high
school, my future work will employ longitudinal methods to assess students'
social interactions and school adjustment prior to, during, and following a
transition from elementary school to junior high school. Because transitions
appear to be particularly difficult for African-American males and for females,
ethnic and sex differences will be a primary focus of future work.
I am excited about the opportunity to involve students in all aspects of this
program of research. Students who join me will have opportunities to learn more
about a variety of content areas (e.g., achievement motivation, peer
relationships, ethnic and sex differences, coping and social support, and
resilience), to become familiar with multiple research methods (e.g., survey,
daily diary, and observational approaches), and to get hands-on, practical
experience in the processes of data collection and data analysis.