UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION FOR LIFELONG EDUCATION, THROUGH BIOGRAPHY, COMPLEXITY AND CONTROL. By GRAEME MARTIN A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Education College of Social Sciences University of Birmingham 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Lifelong learning requires motivation to complete learning projects across the lifespan. Understanding an individual’s commitment to extended periods of learning is not well understood. There are particular gaps in longitudinal and biographical accounts of learners grounded in frameworks of lifespan theories. Equally missing are accounts that consider the dynamical nature of learning across time. Three learner biographies are examined to develop a dynamical control perspective of motivation for extended learning. Drawing on a regulatory framework the Lifespan Theory of Control and concepts from complexity perspectives particularly Non Linear Dynamical Systems Theory, including feedback, attractors and bifurcation a model is offered which synthesises processes of control, motivation and dynamics leading to competence and accounting for extended periods of learning. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to give my sincere thanks to my supervisor Professor Gary Thomas, my mentor Dr Nick Peim. My family for their support and encouragement, thank you Helen. Contents Contents .................................................................................................................... - 1 - INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ - 3 - Aim ................................................................................................................... - 9 - Research Questions ......................................................................................... - 11 - Chapter 1. MOTIVATION ..................................................................................... - 16 - Achievement Motivation and Competence Motivation ................................... - 22 - Achievement and Competence ................................................................................ - 23 - Motivation and the life span ........................................................................... - 26 - The Lifespan Theory of Control ..................................................................... - 27 - Constraints are both limitation and developmental scaffold. ................................. - 32 - CHAPTER 2 LEARNING ...................................................................................... - 53 - Chaos, complexity, nonlinearity and learning ........................................................ - 64 - Systems Theory ................................................................................................... - 67 - CHAPTER 3. LIFELONG LEARNING ................................................................ - 80 - Lifelong learning and Motivation ....................................................................... - 80 - CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY ........................................................................ - 107 - Biography as case study .................................................................................... - 107 - The life story interview ......................................................................................... - 127 - Study Design .................................................................................................................... Sample Selection and Data Collection .......................................................... - 132 - Conclusion .................................................................................................... - 146 - LIFE STORIES AND ANALYSES ..................................................................... - 147 - Presenting a lifestory............................................................................................. - 147 - Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ - 148 - Analysis…………………………………………………………………………...-155- D…………………………………………………………………………………….155 P. ................................................................................................................................ 176 H. ................................................................................................................................ 200 CONCLUSIONS........................................................................................................ 220 References: ......................................................................................................... 231 Appendices................................................................................................................253 - 1 - LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Yerkes- Dodson law of arousal and performance. p.3 Figure 2. Cusp Catastrophe p.4 Figure 3. A scan of Nico’s brain p.5 Figure 4. Hypothetical life-course trajectories of primary control potential, primary control striving and secondary control striving p.40 Figure 5. Optimisation in primary and secondary control p.44 Figure 6. Hypothetical trajectories of different developmental goals p.44 Figure 7. Feedback p.69 Figure 8. Period doubling route to chaos p.73 Figure 9. A life chart for D p.170 Figure 10 A schematic diagram of continuous dynamics in complex systems, for the emergence of a motivational pattern p.226 Figure 11. A prototheoretical dynamical control model of motivation for extended learning p.227 - 2 - INTRODUCTION ‘All linear systems resemble one another, each nonlinear system is nonlinear in its own way.’ (After Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, in Smith 2007) This thesis is concerned with the processes that sustain motivation for a life of learning and competence1. These processes are developmental, dynamical, complex and nonlinear. Motivation to learn (or not) is an emergent pattern, a tapestry of the structure and evolution of a complex system, in this case a person. Understanding this better requires an analysis of change. Change is not well understood in the social sciences, change is conceptualised as linear and proportional, but in any complex system, linearity is the exception not the rule. Take an old example from psychology the Yerkes-Dodson (1908) law of arousal and performance showing an early observation of emotion and motivation’s influence on behaviour. Figure 1. Yerkes- Dodson law of arousal and performance It is clearly not linear, as arousal increases so does performance until a point when increasing arousal produces a decline in performance. This is probably not an accurate I 1 I’m using the term competence after White’s (1959) idea of ‘effectance’ discussed later in chapter 1. ‘Motivation’. - 3 - account of what happens in real life (Yerkes and Dodson were experimenting with mice). In real life lots of things could happen depending on who you are (e.g. a novice or expert), a maximum level of arousal might be reached and you give the performance of a lifetime, alternatively you get ‘stage fright’ and performance ends abruptly. In dynamical systems theory, an abrupt end would be called a cusp catastrophe (after Thom, 1974) and could be modelled mathematically and represented diagrammatically thus: Figure 2. Cusp Catastrophe The above figure is from Hardy and Parfitt (1991) who found that high anxiety can lead to abrupt changes in performance in athletes and anxiety had to be conceived of and measured in complex ways. The point being, that to understand change processes a conceptual framework and tools are needed which better explain in nonlinear, complex developmental terms, what might be happening and these are mostly missing from human enquiry (Guastello, 2009). I’d like to start with a very short story which contains features important to the ideas and viewpoints presented in this thesis. I want to return to this story in the methodology and conclusions. - 4 - Nico ‘hides a secret inside his head’ (Batarro, 2002) and his secret really is remarkable. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1992, his family are loving and protective and he has a brother and a sister. Nico is a charming and gregarious youngster, healthy and a good pupil at school. He now lives in Spain and attends a mainstream school. He likes computers, enjoys fencing and drawing cartoons, loves music, has learned to play an electronic keyboard, he also sings in the school choir. If you were to see him at home or school, you wouldn’t notice anything unusual in his overt behaviour, though you would probably notice a slight limp and some difficulty in moving his left arm and something you would have noticed when he was younger, was the small laptop he carried around with him at a time when many children wouldn’t have had a such a thing. Overall though, Nico shows (using technical terminology) normal cognitive, social and affective development. So what’s the secret inside his head? Figure 3. A