Motivation and Academic Challenges Lab

All students face academic challenges - these might be serious challenges like failing a course, or everyday challenges like finding time to do homework. All students also think about the benefits of academic tasks alongside those challenges.

Our lab studies the relation between motivation and learning, with a special focus on how students consider the value and the challenges of certain academic and career choices. We also examine what leads to the development of motivation and we design and test interventions that promote motivation and help students overcome challenges.

Join the Lab!

Doctoral students: I am recruiting a new graduate student to join me at Teachers College, Columbia University in Fall 2025. The Developmental Psychology Ph.D. program in the Department of Human Development provides high-quality, broad training in developmental processes across education.

Other students: I am always looking for new collaborators or research assistants to help out with ongoing projects. Get in touch if you would like to know more.

Ongoing Projects

Motivational Interventions

Working with STEM instructors, we are developing interventions to help students value their learning and/or reduce students’ perceptions of the negative consequences of learning in both college and high school. Other recent lab work examines how to design interventions that help Ph.D. mentors in the life sciences feel motivated to learn skills that will address conflicts with their student mentees in an effective way.

Motivational Development and STEM Learning Trajectories

Our lab is currently examining what motivates high school and college students to choose certain careers or courses of study over others and what motivational challenges can make students change their career plans. Hand in hand with that focus, we examine how learning contexts and teachers might better be able to support students’ career motivation by giving them new types of resources to help learn about career options.

Examining Negative Motivational Beliefs

Lots of recent work in our lab examines how students’ beliefs about negative consequences of learning, or perceptions of learning barriers, influence their short- and long-term learning outcomes. We are currently working on designing projects that measure how social/career models, teachers, peers, and other contextual factors influence students’ perceptions of negative (and positive) motivational beliefs.