Abstract

The aim of this workshop is to provide participants with theoretical and empirical tools for studying the interplay of motivation, culture, and learning in multicultural educational contexts. The first part of the workshop will focus on familiarizing participants with theoretical content knowledge on how motivation researchers have studied culture, while the second part of the workshop will focus on empirical approaches that can be used to most effectively explore cross-cultural similarities and differences in motivation. In Part 1, studies that explicitly investigate the role of culture in motivation will be reviewed. Attention will be given to findings that seem paradoxical from a Western-oriented psychology. We will also consider the consequences that these cultural differences in motivational dynamics have across a broad range of psycho-educational phenomena such as learning strategies, school engagement, academic emotions, and achievement among others.The second part of the workshop will consider how cross-cultural similarities and differences can be most effectively studied, and will explore the strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of methods. The consilience approach is advocated for strengthening the findings in cross-cultural educational research. Three strategies for strengthening cross-cultural invariance are proposed under this framework: systematic contrasts of cultural groups, the inclusion of covariates to rule out alternative explanations, and the use of multiple research methods.