Making Learning Personally Meaningful: A New Framework for Relevance Research

ABSTRACT

Personal relevance goes by many names in the motivation literature, stemming from a number of theoretical frameworks. Currently these lines of research are being conducted in parallel with little synthesis across them, perhaps because there is no unifying definition of the relevance construct within which this research can be situated. In this paper we propose a new framework to synthesize existing research on relevance and provide a common platform for researchers to communicate and collaborate. In light of this new framework we review the role of relevance in three prominent theories in the motivation literature: the four-phase model of interest development, expectancy-value theory, and self-determination theory. We then explore eight relevance constructs commonly used in the literature and the educational interventions that derive from them. Finally, we offer a synthesis of these constructs and suggest some directions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Interest
• interventions
• motivation
• relevance
• value

Acknowledgments

We thank Ann Renninger and Maarten Vansteenkiste for their comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (Grant R01GM102703). Stacy Priniski and Cameron Hecht were supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Award #R305B150003 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education or the National Institutes of Health.

Note

Notes

1. Consistent with prior conceptualizations, we define identity as a collection of personal characteristics and abilities that are regarded as relatively stable but dynamically constructed qualities defining the self. Identity serves to differentiate the self from others (e.g., good at math) or connect the self to valued social groups (see Oyserman, Elmore & Smith, 2012, for a review).