Date of Award
8-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Teaching and Learning
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. Jacquelynn A. Malloy
Committee Member
Dr. Kaileigh Byrne
Committee Member
Dr. Meihua Qian
Committee Member
Dr. Susan Cridland-Hughes
Abstract
Students tend to behave differently in different classroom settings. Many factors contribute to the change in behavior, including motivation. Research suggests a tendency for student motivation to decrease as students move from elementary to middle to high school. However, motivation in students is not uniform and is dependent on factors like the subject, and time of day, for example. This dissertation examines student motivation in social studies classes at a public high school in Michigan using Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT) as a framework for understanding motivation, and student impulsiveness as understood through the lens of Delay Discounting (DD). This research proposes that similarities in the two models, such as in how value and cost are used to make decisions and how value is impacted by self-concept beliefs, suggest the possibility that impulsiveness may impact motivation by means of ability and self-concept beliefs.
Two studies were conducted involving participants from a small public high school in a midsized city in Michigan. The first study involved 169 participants who completed two surveys. The first study contained the History Modified Self- and Task-Perceptions Questionnaire and the Task Order Preference Questionnaire to assess student motivation in social studies classes and preferences for work engagement, respectively. The second survey was the Monetary-Choice Questionnaire that was used to ascertain participant discount rate, which served as a measure of impulsiveness. It found impulsiveness did not directly impact student motivation as hypothesized.
A second study was conducted at the same location involving a series of semi-structured interviews using participants purposefully chosen from those who participated in the surveys. Students were selected based on their overall measures of task value and discount rate, as well as how they responded to certain questions on the surveys. A two-cycle approach to response analysis was used. First the interviews were coded using the SEVT framework as a guide, and the codes were organized to reveal four major themes, teaching, expectancy beliefs, student choice, and perceived difficulty, and social and situated learning.
This project suggests several avenues of future research. First, the concept of value can be clarified further with research into how people attribute value of different types of goods (fungible, consumable, experiential, attained, etc.) and how these different types of goods are discounted. Second, more research can be done to explore how changes in learning situation and context impacts motivation. While the SEVT model recognizes the importance of the learning context on motivation more work can be done to understand how aspects of the context such as peers, the teacher, and teaching methods can impact motivation.
Recommended Citation
Kruid, Benjamin, "Student Motivation in Social Studies Classes at the Public Museum High School: A Dissertation" (2026). All Dissertations. 4384.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4384
Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0002-0068-0144
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Secondary Education Commons