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AnneMarie M. ConleyAssistant Professor |
Research Interests
Motivation in education (especially in STEM), Adolescent development, Person-centered approaches to studying change
URLs
Academic Distinctions
Dimond Best Dissertation Award, School of Education, University of Michigan (2008)
Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Michigan (2004-2005)
Regents’ Fellowship, University of Michigan (2000-2003)
High Honors, University of California, Berkeley (2000)
Research Abstract
Biography
Dr. Conley is an educational psychologist who researches how students are motivated to learn. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and a graduate student in the Combined Program in Education & Psychology at the University of Michigan, she has investigated how the will to learn develops during adolescence, and how this motivation influences how much students learn and achieve. She earned her Ph.D. in developmental and educational psychology in 2007 and came to UCI in July of that year as an Assistant Professor of Education in the Learning, Cognition, and Development area. Her dissertation was awarded the Dimond Outstanding Dissertation Award by the University of Michigan.
As of Fall 2009, Conley is co-PI on two new grants from the National Science Foundation examining motivation in math and science learning. The first (NSF# DUE- 0928103) looks at the role of teachers’ motivation in promoting students’ motivation and achievement. This $1.9 million grant is assessing teachers’ motivation to learn in professional development contexts and the influence of teachers’ motivation on student achievement in math and science. The second grant (NSF# DUE-0929076) also studies the influence of teachers on student achievement in an effort to take to scale a successful instructional intervention that gives teachers in-class support for changing their practice. Conley directs the research and evaluation component of this $2 million project, which involves randomly assigning schools to intervention and control groups and tracking teacher and student learning and motivation across three project years.
Research
Dr. Conley's entry point into important issues in education is motivational processes. Teenagers drop out of high school or graduate without mastering basic skills; girls continue to be underrepresented in careers in math and science; talented students burn out or fail to apply themselves, with test scores and academic records not indicative of their potential. At the heart of these disparate problems in education today, however, lies a common solution—motivation.
Motivation affects learners of all ages, in all areas of education, in schools, at home, and in the workplace. Barring extreme learning disability or serious lack of resources, students who are motivated to learn will learn. As a solution motivation can be cost effective, depending not on investment in technology or resources, but on the modification of learning climates to facilitate its development. Further, educators need not figure out how to create motivation; it is present in most children from birth, evident in their earliest explorations of the world. Motivation need only be fostered, or at the very least not constrained.
Just as motivation can be a panacea, failure to attend to motivation can thwart the most promising educational reforms. The best curricula and the most useful technologies will be wasted in the absence of motivation to use them. Recent reforms, with their focus on accountability through high-stakes testing, have largely ignored the role of motivation, or are based on assumptions about motivation that are at odds with what motivation research demonstrates. Dr. Conley's research aims to understand motivational processes in today’s schools by asking how students’ motivation to learn develops and how this development can be supported by teachers, classrooms, and schools. She studies learners who are ethnically, economically, and linguistically diverse and investigate students in context using a range of quantitative approaches, including Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and person-centered approaches like cluster analysis and latent class analysis.
Selected Publications
Conley, A. M. (2012). Patterns of motivation beliefs: Combining achievement goal and expectancy-value perspectives. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(1), 32-47.
Dang, T., Conley, A., and Duncan, G. (2012). Effects of goal orientations on adolescent mathematics achievement gains. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 37, 47-54.
Domina, T. D., Conley, A. M., Farkas, G. (2011). The link between educational expectations and effort in the college-for-all-era. Sociology of Education 84 (2), 93-112.
Domina, T. D., Conley, A. M., Farkas, G. (2011). The case for dreaming big. Sociology of Education 84 (2), 118-121.
Linnenbrink-Garcia, L., Durik, A. M., Conley, A. M., Barron, K. E., Tauer, J. M., Karabenick, S. A., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2010). Situational Interest Survey (SIS): An instrument to assess the role of situational factors in interest development. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 70(4), 647-671.
Conley, A. M., & Pintrich, P. R. (2004). Changes in epistemological beliefs in elementary science students. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 29 (2), 186-204.
Link to this profile
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5611
Last updated
03/19/2012