Social and cultural perspectives on human behavior

Sociocultural Approach to Motivation in Learning

By grounding a comparison within the context of motivation, Rueda and Dembo demonstrate that a synthesis of cognitive and sociocultural frameworks in educational psychology is feasible as both frameworks place a great deal of emphasis on constructivism and a mastery rather than performance goal approach. Though the two approaches also have fundamental differences in so much that the cognitive framework focuses on psychological constructs of motivation as located within the individual, while the sociocultural perspective is that a complete understanding of such mental activity must be grounded in larger sociocultural contexts or activity settings, the article suggests that integrating the two would lead to significant advances in improving learning. To prove the point, the article analyses the case of an under performing minority student, Alex, through both a cognitive and sociocultural perspective on the student's motivational problems and intervention strategies. By virtue of such an analysis, Rueda and Dembo succeed in establishing that the best possible response to assisting students in improving achievement performance would be through addressing both sociocultural and cognitive factors, and using these as a resource for instruction and as a basis for interpreting behavior.

Key to Rueda and Dembo's analysis is the role played by sociocultural roots in learning, which need to be taken into consideration along with individual cognitive activity. While evidence of the role of sociocultural factors has long been established with standardized test results consistently reflecting gender, SES and race gaps in academic achievement, it is interesting to note that a recent study suggests that if minority and low-income students receive positive messages about their ability to learn and succeed academically through intervention by appointed mentors and cognitive strategies, they are less likely to conform to stereotypes and that such an approach can help remedy stereotype based underperformance (New York Times, Jan 20, 2004). Such studies lend proof positive to Rueda and Dembo's argument for integrating the cognitive and sociocultural frameworks in educational psychology.