Intervention

Oyserman, D., Brickman, D., & Rhodes, M. (2007). School success, possible selves, and parent school-involvement. Family Relations.

Increased parent school-involvement is associated with better academic outcomes, yet proximal contributors to this effect remain understudied. We focus on one potential proximal contributor, youth’s positive and negative future self-images or “possible selves,” reasoning that if parent school-involvement fosters possible selves then interventions aimed at enhancing youths’ possible selves should moderate the negative effect of low parent school-involvement. We examine a two-year follow-up of a randomized clinical trial of a possible-self-based intervention (N = 239), demonstrating with regression equations that the intervention moderated the association of low parent school-involvement with worse grades and less school-engaged behavior. Low school-involvement negatively influenced achievement among control, not intervention, youth, suggesting that school-based possible-self-focused interventions can moderate the undermining effect of low parent school-involvement.

Oyserman, D., Bybee, D. & Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes: How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 188-204.

Puzzled by the gap between academic attainment and academic possible selves (APSs) among lowincome and minority teens, the authors hypothesized that APSs alone are not enough unless linked with plausible strategies, made to feel like “true” selves and connected with social identity. A brief intervention to link APSs with strategies, create a context in which social and personal identities felt congruent, and change the meaning associated with difficulty in pursuing APSs (n =141 experimental, n =123 control low-income 8th graders) increased success in moving toward APS goals: academic initiative, standardized test scores, and grades improved; and depression, absences, and in-school misbehavior declined. Effects were sustained over a 2-year follow-up and were mediated by change in possible selves.

Horowitz, E., Sorensen, N., Yoder, N., & Oyserman, D. (2018). Teachers can do it: Scalable identity-based motivation intervention in the classroom. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 54, 12-28. (Supplementary Materials)

Classroom activities aimed at changing students’ identity-based motivation (IBM) improve student outcomes by helping students experience school as the path to their adult future identities and their difficulties along the way as signals of the importance of schoolwork. One way to scale these effects would be to have teachers deliver IBM activities. Hence, we asked if, after a brief two-day training, teacher-delivered IBM intervention could meet fidelity standards and if attaining more fidelity matters. We trained all eighth grade teachers in two middle schools (N=211 students). We compared attained fidelity (dosage, adherence, quality of delivery, student responsiveness, fidelity of receipt) to Durlak and DuPre’s (2008) empirically derived standard for fidelity. We found that most classrooms (88%) and students (89%) received IBM intervention at-or-above threshold standard, implying that teacher-based IBM delivery is viable. Moreover, investing in improving fidelity is worthwhile; above-threshold fidelity improved core grade-point-average and reduced risk of course failure.

Process matters: Teachers benefit their classrooms and students when they deliver an identity-based motivation intervention with fidelity

Students value school success but often experience classroom norms implying that learning is easy and succeeding in school is not difficult. These succeed-with-ease-not-effort norms can undermine students’ grades and increase their risk of course failure in three ways. They can reduce the likelihood that students experience school as relevant to their future goals, experience right now as the time to get going, and difficulties as signals of schoolwork's importance, not its impossibility. To support student academic outcomes, we examine Pathways-to-Success, a classroom-level intervention operationalizing Identity-based Motivation theory in a 3-cycle, 3-year development design (N=1,142 8th-graders, 87% from low-income families as defined by free/reduced-price lunch, 64% Latinx, 20% African American). We document that Pathways-to-Success can be sustainable; our middle school teachers implemented and taught other teachers to implement Pathways-to-Success. We use structural equation models to show that effects are due to the theorized process; teachers who implemented with more signal clarity supported academic success by bolstering their students' identity-based motivation. We operationalized signal clarity as a mean of five fidelity components (dosage, adherence, quality, responsiveness, receipt). Signal clarity matters; students experiencing Pathways-to-Success with a clearer signal have a higher identity-based motivation score. Higher identity-based motivation yields better school outcomes.

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