If the script doesn’t work, change the script


 

 
 

 

If the Script Doesn’t Work, 

Change the Script 

Julianne C. Turner 

April 20, 2022 

 

Every career is different, emerging from 
different circumstances and almost always 
influenced by unforeseen opportunities and 
challenges. The script we write will be 
revised and edited many times. I have found 
my script changing at important junctures in 
my career. This reality is difficult to convey 
to researchers just starting out, but it is 
important to know. As have others in this 
series, I hope that some of the opportunities 
and challenges in my career can inform or 
support them as they travel similar roads. In 
looking back on my journey to and through 
educational research, I will try to show how 
striving, persistence, and taking risks helped 
me to forge the path I wanted to travel. I 
learned that following my own path rather 
than the current fashion, thinking outside 

the box to solve problems, emphasizing the 
quality of my work and cultivating 
relationships with schools all helped me to 
persist and to change the script when I 
needed to in order to reach my goals. 

 
I Never Knew I Would be a Teacher 

I was raised in a middle-class family by 

parents who had attended 2 years of college 
– a first in their families. Education was at 
the center of what my parents wanted for 
their three children. They sacrificed to send 
us to Catholic school, convinced that this 
investment was the best they could make for 
their children. I quickly took to the 
academic challenges and extracurricular 
opportunities I was offered at my Catholic 
girls’ high school. Among those were 
opportunities for leadership. I was able to 
use my interest in and talent for art in many 
ways, becoming the “go-to” person for class 
art projects. I served as senior class 
president. I don’t think I would have 
pursued either path had I been a student in 
a typical co-ed high school. At that time, all 
the leadership positions in high schools 
were filled by boys. Girls could, of course, 
serve as class secretary, and usually did. My 
high school experience communicated to 
me that I could do what I wanted, and I 
would continue to be surprised when 
circumstances sent a different message, as 
they would later in my professional life. 

In college, I majored in French because 
I loved it. But, as fate would have it, I met 
my husband in college and my educational 
choices began to take a very practical turn. I 
had to change the script. I needed to think 
about finding a job after college. I was 
making this decision right at the intersection 
of post-World War II American culture, 
where women like my mother had had very 
traditional roles, and the advent of the 

Turner, J. (2022, April 20). If the script doesn’t work, change the script. Acquired Wisdom Series, S. 
Nieto, F. Erickson & P. Winne (Eds.). Education Review, 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v29.3597 

http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v29.3597


Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 2 
 

 
 
 

 
Women’s Liberation movement. It is said 
that in the 1950s and 1960s, three career 
paths were open to women – teacher, 
secretary, or nurse. At the same time, the 
women’s movement was encouraging us to 
break barriers. I don’t know how the 
historical time influenced my decision, but I 
don’t believe I chose to teach because it was 
my only option. Nor was I one of those 
who always wanted to be a teacher. Rather, I 
had had the privilege of a good education 
and I loved to learn, so the profession of 
teaching was genuinely appealing and was a 
good complement to my French major. 

My first teaching job was in a well- 
resourced suburb in the Boston area (it was 
the only job I was offered at a time when 
teaching jobs were very competitive). I 
quickly learned to love my 7th and 8th grade 
students. One of my vivid memories is 
getting a reprimand from my principal for 
an anti-Vietnam War Memorial Day 
assembly I helped my Student Council 
advisees produce! 

As I became a more experienced 
teacher, I began to “notice” more. I became 
aware of the different learning trajectories 
among my students and began to think 
about why. I began to experiment with 
different instructional approaches, hoping it 

would make a difference. As I look back, I 
realize that this was the birth of my abiding 
interest in and passion for how students 
learn. 

I pursued this interest through a 
master’s degree in reading and spent the 
next 10 years as a reading specialist in 
suburban and city schools. During this time, 
I learned two things which were to influence 
the rest of my career. First, I realized that I 
was not satisfied with what I knew about 
learning and instruction. Although I sought 
out opportunities to learn more about how 
to improve, there were few. I didn’t know 
anything about research and would have had 
no idea how to access it. Disappointingly, I 
felt alone in my quest for ideas about how 
to be a better teacher. Gradually, I lost 
interest in working in an environment where 
professional development was both absent 
and devalued. I wanted more opportunities 
to learn. 

 

The second lesson that I learned came 
from my students. I taught classes that used 
to be called “remedial reading.” All my 
students had experienced difficulty in 
becoming proficient readers. By the time 
they were in middle school, most had 
developed low self-concepts as readers. In 
addition, they experienced this as a stigma. 
Just entering my classroom gave them the 
message that they weren’t smart. Their low 
self-efficacy made effort seem futile; they 
didn’t think they could learn. I tried all my 

instructional strategies, but I wondered if I 
really made a difference for them. Only later 
in graduate school did I realize that their 
challenge may have been low self-efficacy, a 
motivation issue. After about 15 years in 
public schools, I knew I had to strive to find 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Figure 1. High school graduation picture 

 
After about 15 years in public 

schools, I knew I had to strive to find 

some answers to these questions. 

Even though I had assumed I would 

be a teacher forever, I realized that it 

was time to change the script again. 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 3 
 

 
 

some answers to these questions. Even 
though I had assumed I would be a teacher 
forever, I realized that it was time to change 
the script again. 

In 1985, a job offer to my husband from 
the History Department at University of 
Michigan provided an opportunity. I had 
begun a graduate program in Research and 
Evaluation at Boston College before the 
move and found myself falling in love with 
research. But it was a complete surprise to 
me that I might consider getting a PhD! I 
was so focused on learning what l craved 
that it didn’t really occur to me that this 
decision might mean a whole new career. 
Once in Ann Arbor and following the bread 
crumbs, I learned about the Combined 
Program in Education and Psychology at 
Michigan and sought entry into the very 
unfamiliar world of academe. 

To contemplate starting a PhD at that 
age, with two school-age children, was risky. 
I was giving up what I knew (teaching) and 
embracing very new challenges. It meant 
persistence – studying for the GRE again at 
39, including 5 A.M. study sessions before 
the kids got up. I hadn’t stopped to consider 
that I would be almost old enough to be the 
mother of my 22-year-old classmates. I 
learned the designation “returning woman,” 
used to describe those of us crazy or 
ambitious enough to embark on the 
challenges of a PhD and a second career at 
such an advanced age! 

Finally! I Get to Learn Something 
New! 

Beginning my PhD was both exhilarating 
and daunting. I had not been a Psychology 
major like many of my colleagues in the 
Combined Program and I felt intimidated. 
To my surprise, my advisor, Scott Paris, told 
me how valuable my experience as a teacher 
was. That boosted my confidence. This is 
also where my experience teaching students 
with reading difficulties and low self-efficacy 
became relevant. I gravitated to the literacy 
research being done by Karen Wixson and 
Annemarie Palincsar. My interest in 

classrooms led me to Phyllis Blumenfeld’s 
research on motivation in classrooms. Scott 
Paris’s research integrated literacy and 
motivation and he became my dissertation 
chair. My dissertation research examined the 
development of motivation for literacy in 
1st-grade classrooms (Turner, 1995). It 
remains one of my favorite projects. I was 
fortunate to receive both the best 
dissertation award from the School of 
Education and the best dissertation award 
from the International Reading Association 
in 1993. 

 

Figure 2. University of Michigan School of Education 

I dove deeper into motivation by 
studying with Marty Maehr and Paul 
Pintrich. Marty had just come to Michigan 
from the University of Illinois, where he had 
been developing a new theory in motivation, 
achievement goal theory, along with Carole 
Ames, John Nicholls and Carol Dweck. I 
was very fortunate to have participated in an 
intervention study led by Marty and Carol 
Midgley at schools in Ypsilanti, Michigan. 
There, we worked with teachers to promote 
an emphasis on mastery goals in their 
classroom instruction. I loved the mix of 
theory and practice. It was the first of many 
classroom projects that were to become my 
life’s work. 

In terms of studying motivation, I was 
in the right place at the right time. Michigan 
was becoming a hub of motivation research, 
and goal theory would go on to dominate 
motivation research for several decades. It 
was an exhilarating time for motivation 
research and the Combined Program 
provided an exceptional experience. Our 
professors were extraordinary mentors and 
they created professionalization 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 4 
 

 
 

opportunities for all of us. My fellow 
graduate students in motivation and I all 
began our careers fortunate to work with 
goal theory pioneers and all of us have 
continued in goal theory or motivation 
research. Indeed, our training made us a 
force to be reckoned with. At AERA in the 
1990s, we were called the “Michigan Mafia” 
(behind our backs). Fellow graduate 
students Eric Anderman, Tim Urdan, 
Lynley Anderman, and Helen Patrick have 
become lifelong friends and colleagues. At 
AERA, I met Debra Meyer, a fellow 
graduate student from University of Texas. 
Finding similar interests, we began a long- 
distance collaboration that has lasted to this 
day. Much of what I have learned and 
accomplished I owe to Deb’s collaboration. 

 

Figure 3. Penn State Department of Education 
 

The only thing harder than graduate 
school was to find a job! Not only was I 
older than most job candidates, but I was 
also married with a family. My husband was 
a tenured professor at Michigan, and he 
wasn’t easy to “move.” To pursue a 
professional career, I would need to find a 
position elsewhere, but that meant splitting 
up the family. This is a very real dilemma 
that many women face, and I knew women 
who gave up their careers or took a poor 
second best because the husband’s career 
took precedence. I was not going to do that; 
I had to embrace the risk. I revised the 
script again, taking a position in Educational 
Psychology at Penn State and moving there 
with our 10th grade son. The high school in 
State College was a great experience for our 
son, and he and I remained there until his 

graduation and my move to Notre Dame, 
but it was a long three years. 

Obstacles Along the Way 

An offer from Notre Dame to my 
husband provided the opportunity to 
negotiate a “spousal hire” for me. Although 
we were grateful to live together again, this 
move proved to be a major challenge for me 
professionally, as it is for many in two 
academic couples. I left a tenure track 
position at Penn State for a non-tenure track 
assistant research professor position at 
Notre Dame. It was a risky decision. With 
no colleagues at Notre Dame and no shared 
interests with Psychology faculty (there was 
no Education Department), I had to find a 
way to make it work. 

At the beginning of this essay, I 
mentioned that striving, persistence and 
willingness to take risks were threads woven 
through my research career. By far, the 
challenge that required the most striving and 
persistence was making a place for myself at 
Notre Dame. As many “spousal hires” 
know, it is the spouse who received the initial 
offer and the opportunity for the other 
spouse can vary from a good to a poor fit. 
The chair of Psychology seemed mostly 
unaware of my presence and assigned me an 
office that had been a workroom in a then- 
disused lab. I was never introduced to other 
faculty and had to try to make those 
connections myself. My position as assistant 
research professor offered me little status 
among tenure track faculty. I was left to try 
to make connections on my own, just 
striving to “be seen.” I don’t think this 

 

Figure 4. University of Notre Dame Psychology 
Department 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 5 
 

 
 

treatment was intentional, but it signaled to 
me how little the Psychology Dept. was 
invested in my success and that I would 
have to make my own way. 

During this difficult time, I was 
fortunate to receive crucial support from 
Carol Midgley, a Michigan mentor. Carol 
believed that I was on to something with 
classroom observations as a measure of 
student motivation. She invited me to write 
a proposal with her to the Spencer 
Foundation. The Spencer Grant provided 
me some visibility and credibility among 
peers, although the general sentiment 
among the Psychology faculty was that 
“applied” research was second class. At the 
same time, I was striving to move to a 
tenure track position, which took several 
years. I relied on colleagues outside of 
Psychology to make my case, and I was 
formally granted tenure, not in Psychology, 
but in a department consisting of faculty 
from many different disciplines. A few years 
later, I negotiated tenure in Psychology. It 
was only in my last year at Notre Dame that 
I achieved full professor status. But I could 
not have achieved my goals without 
continual striving to make my way and a 
great deal of persistence. 

One of my proudest accomplishments 
at Notre Dame was the founding of the 
minor in Education, Schooling, and Society. 
We attracted many students who were 
interested in teaching and education. The 
minor provided an opportunity for many 
students in both Psychology and other 
majors to explore topics in education. It 
filled a real need given that Notre Dame did 
not have an education department. The 
quality of our students soon gave the 
program status and we were among the 
most sought-out minors at the university. 

Later, as I contemplated retirement, I 
sought other ways to stay engaged in 
educational research and to support its 
dissemination. I was fortunate to serve as 
editor of the American Educational Research 
Journal for four years along with my 
outstanding co-editors Mark Berends, 
Francesca López, Sadhana Putambekar and 

Suzanne Wilson. As an editorial team, we 
sought to invite and publish interdisciplinary 
manuscripts with diverse methodologies 
representing a broad range of education 
research and researchers. It was a rewarding 
end to a satisfying research career. 

Given that I had to create my own 
opportunities and space at Notre Dame, I 
set out to follow my path with 
determination. In the next section I detail 
some strategies I employed as well as the 
thrust of my research career – studying 
motivation in classrooms. 

 

 

Why Classroom Research? 

My teaching career must have been an 
important influence in the way I 
conceptualized motivation research. 
Teachers are usually keenly aware of their 
students’ responses to instruction and how 
that affects their learning. Because of my 
experience, I always thought of student 
motivation as a classroom issue, not as an 
individual difference. Granted, students 
enter classrooms with all kinds of 
differences, but to be successful, a teacher 
has to forge with them a shared experience 
that supports their engagement and learning. 
The memories of my middle school reading 
students were still fresh – what could I have 
done better for them? It was inevitable, 
then, that I would return to the classroom to 
study how teachers and students interact to 
create their learning environment. I was 
going to be a classroom researcher. 

It is important to note that most 
“classroom” motivation research at the time 

 
My experience as a teacher validated 

my belief that what teachers said 

and did during instruction was 

influential in students’ motivation to 

learn. So, while most people were 

studying students’ perceptions of 

their classrooms, I set out to explain 

how students formed those 

perceptions. 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 6 
 

 
 

(indeed, even today) was survey research. In 
this approach, or research about classrooms, 
researchers might visit classrooms to 
administer student surveys, but it was 
uncommon to observe classroom activity. 
This social cognitive approach reflected 
psychology’s longstanding emphasis on 
individual differences and the influence of 
the cognitive revolution that had established 
the importance of individuals’ perceptions 
of their environments. But it also 
acknowledged reciprocal influences of 
personal and environmental factors. In this 
view, it was enough to know what students 
perceived in a social setting like the 
classroom but it was not necessary to 
document why. My experience as a teacher 
validated my belief that what teachers said 
and did during instruction was influential in 
students’ motivation to learn. So, while most 
people were studying students’ perceptions of 
their classrooms, I set out to explain how 
students formed those perceptions. I 
reasoned that most of students’ time at 
school was spent engaging in instruction, yet 
the effects of instruction were left implicit in 
motivation research. I decided that teachers’ 
instruction would be the focus of my 
research on students’ motivation to learn. 

Answering those kinds of questions 
meant that I needed to be in classrooms – 
not just administering surveys, but also 
observing teacher instruction and student 
behavior. At the time, this approach was 
novel in motivation research. Although 
some theories proposed that certain 
instructional practices (e.g., emphasis on 
effort, supporting autonomy) supported 
student motivation to learn, there was no 
explanation of what that might look like 
during instruction. 

What exactly might a teacher do and say 
in a lesson on percentages, for example, that 
supported student effort or autonomy? 

Looking back, I realize that my research 
career has two phases. Although my central 
research question, “How does teachers’ 
instruction help explain students’ motivation 
to learn?” didn’t change, my methods did. In 
the first phase, I focused on teachers’ 

instruction, but documented students’ 
motivation largely through survey responses. 
I was always dissatisfied with this static 
approach because it didn’t measure the 
interaction between teachers and students. 
In the second phase, I adopted different 
theoretical perspectives and methods to 
portray the interaction between students and 
teachers. 

 

Figure 5. 1995 family vacation in NM with sons Peter 
and Chris and husband Jim 

As I embarked on my research career, I 
realized that my earlier career as a teacher 
would be an advantage. In every study I 
conducted, the fact that I had been a 
classroom teacher and understood situations 
from a teacher’s perspective helped me 
establish relationships with the schools and 
teachers I wished to work with. My advisor, 
Scott Paris, had been right about that! I 
learned to mention that fact very early in 
every conversation I had with 
superintendents, principals and teachers. It 
was a great tool for getting my foot in the 
door. 

In my first study after graduate school, 
we investigated middle grade students’ 
motivation to learn mathematics from the 
theoretical perspective of “flow” theory. In 
order to justify that instruction was pivotal 
in motivation, as I believed, we needed a 
theory of “good instruction” for our 
observations. For this, we relied on Debra 
Meyer’s dissertation research on scaffolding, 
which theorized effective instruction from a 
Vygotskian perspective. From this 
perspective, teachers who negotiated 
meaning with students, transferred 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 7 
 

 
 

responsibility to them when ready, and 
supported effort would offer moderate 
challenges, which would support student 
involvement. In contrast, teacher “telling,” 
the asking of “right answer” questions or 
tasks that required memorization of 
algorithms would diminish student 
motivation because it did not offer 
challenges and thus, students would report 
more boredom. 

As we would do in a few studies, we 
observed teachers’ mathematics instruction 
in seven classrooms using a rubric based on 
scaffolding. We asked students to report 
their experience of instruction using an 
experience sampling form at the end of each 
class. Teachers who scaffolded their 
students’ learning had students who 
reported more flow or involvement (Turner 
et al, 1998), as we predicted. 

Our contribution was to interpret 
students’ perceptions of classroom 
instruction by specifying why they reported 
involvement or boredom. Our analyses of 
classroom instructional practices provided 
empirical evidence that teacher discourse 
and behavior mattered to student 
motivation. It is worth noting that this 
research was done with no external funding; 
my graduate students and I did all the 
observations and analyses in long distance 
collaboration with Debra Meyer. This type 
of collaboration, often involving colleagues 
from graduate school, was key in all my 
work. These collaborations contributed both 
to the development of my thinking and to 
the actual classroom research and data 
analysis. 

Extending Classroom Research 

Although the script I had written 
assumed that I would have research 
colleagues at my university, that had to be 
revised again when I moved to Notre 
Dame. To implement the Spencer grant, I 
relied professionally on my Michigan 
colleagues, Helen Patrick and Deb Meyer as 
well as graduate students from Michigan and 
Notre Dame. We did a large 2-year 
longitudinal study in three districts, 

including intensive observations in 6th and 
7th grade classrooms in one district. Using 
achievement goal theory, we studied the 
relations between the classroom learning 
environment (e.g., students’ perceptions of 
the classroom goal structure and teachers’ 
instructional discourse) and students’ 
reported use of avoidance strategies (self- 
handicapping, avoidance of help seeking). 
Achievement goal theory proposes that 
teachers send messages about competence 
that are important in their classroom. These 
messages, or goal structures, influence 
students’ goals for learning and thus their 
motivation to learn. The suggestion is that 
students are more likely to adopt the goal 
structures emphasized in their classroom. A 
mastery goal structure sends the message 
that increasing competence through effort is 
most important. A performance goal 
structure sends the message that 
demonstrating competence by 
outperforming others is to be desired. 
Research has demonstrated that mastery 
goal structures are related to positive 
motivational outcomes. However, teachers 
can be unaware both that they are sending 
those messages and how they do so. We 
wanted to document the kinds of messages 
being sent in classrooms and whether 
students reported more or fewer avoidance 
behaviors in relation to their perceptions of 
mastery or performance goal structures. 

We observed teachers’ mathematics 
instruction and audio-taped teacher and 
student discourse. We analyzed teacher 
discourse using Deb Meyer’s categories of 
scaffolding and non- scaffolding instruction. 
Scaffolding discourse supports effort by 
offering supports to students as they learn 
and then transfers responsibility to them, 
conveying confidence in their ability to 
increase competence. Non-scaffolding 
discourse highlights the importance of 
“right answers,” sending the message that a 
student is either “smart” or not. This 
message could encourage students to 
compare their ability to others, thus 
discouraging those who can’t compete. I will 
always have vivid memories of those 
classrooms, now, more than 20 years later. I 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 8 
 

 
 

can recall how one teacher encouraged her 
students to help each other and how she 
celebrated their progress. Her message was, 
“All of you can learn if you try and I am 
here to help you.” I can also recall how a 
different teacher sent messages that some 
students weren’t smart, thus discouraging 
effort. If students did not know the answer, 
the teacher asked another student, but did 
not usually stop to explain the answer, 
depriving students of opportunities to learn. 
This practice sent the message that only 
some students could learn and encouraged 
students to adopt avoidance behaviors as a 
way of protecting their self-worth. By 
analyzing the discourse in our observed 
classrooms for its mastery or performance 
goal emphases, we were able to demonstrate 
that students in classrooms where the 
emphasis on mastery was high and teachers 
scaffolded learning, students reported 
significantly fewer avoidance behaviors, a 
positive motivational profile. 

This was the second study in which 
classroom observations and instructional 
discourse analysis helped us understand why 
students perceived their classrooms as 
supportive (or not) and how these 
perceptions were associated with certain 
positive or negative behaviors and beliefs 
(Turner et al, 2002). Looking at the research 
as a whole, I was becoming convinced that 
to really understand students’ motivation to 
learn, we had to document what they 
experienced in the classroom, and this had 
to include teacher instruction. In an attempt 
to make the case for motivation research in 
classrooms, my colleagues and I argued our 
rationale in several articles (Turner, 2001, 
2010; Turner & Meyer, 1999; 2000; Turner 
& Patrick, 2008). 

Next Step – Taking it to the Teachers 

It might seem obvious that observing 
very different patterns of discourse and 
practices in classrooms led me to wonder 
what might seem obvious now. How do 
teachers understand and explain their 
instructional practices? Did they have 
theories of motivation? When we asked the 
teachers in the Spencer-funded study how 

they engaged their students, their answers 
revealed implicit, or lay, theories of 
motivation. One teacher claimed that she 
“made learning fun.” From our perspective, 
she had a sophisticated implicit 
understanding of how to involve and 
support students in learning, but she did not 
use our theory or language to explain it. 
More disheartening, some of the other 
teachers seemed to hold implicit theories 
that threats and demeaning remarks would 
“motivate” students to obey the rules and 
learn. I realized that although our research 
was contributing to the literature, it wasn’t 
helping teachers. Some might even say we 
were using teachers to advance our own 
research ends. It didn’t seem ethical to study 
teachers but not give them an opportunity 
to think about how their instruction affected 
their students’ motivation. After all, my 
overall professional goal was to contribute 
to engaged learning. I came to believe that 
this goal would be impossible unless we 
worked with teachers. To me, this was the 
next logical step in acknowledging and 
demonstrating the importance of classroom 
interaction in motivation to learn. 

 

Taking it to the Teachers 

Teachers are keenly interested in 
motivating their students, but they cite it as 
a constant challenge. This fact provided an 
opening in recruiting local teachers at one 
intermediate school in Indiana who were 
dissatisfied with their students’ 
“motivation.” Initial conversations with 
teachers revealed that most thought 
motivation was a trait that could not be 
changed. Therefore, I wanted to convince 
these 5th through 8th grade teachers that it 
was instead a state, one that could be altered 
through their instruction. 

Beginning in 2005, I met monthly with 
these six mathematics teachers to discuss a 
motivational framework that I tried to tie 

How do teachers understand and 

explain their instructional practices? 

Did they have theories of 

motivation? 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 9 
 

 
 

closely to instruction and then to student 
motivation. I had become dissatisfied with 
goal theory, partly because it didn’t make 
sense to teachers. The notion that students’ 
(unobservable and implicit) goals to increase 
or demonstrate competence was related to 
their behavior in the classroom was a stretch 
for teachers. Teachers couldn’t “see” 
students’ beliefs the way they could “see” 
their behavior. For example, several teachers 
in this study defined motivation as “bringing 
a pencil to class.” In fact, such behavior may 
have no relation to achievement goals and 
may just reflect how teachers and students 
“do school.” For teachers, that is covering 
the curriculum and for students it is 
cooperating. Motivation to many teachers 
means following the rules and doing what is 
required so that teachers can do their job. 
Motivated students are those who “bring a 
pencil to class,” and unmotivated students 
are those who don’t cooperate. In this 
enactment, it is hard to see how goals figure 
in. 

I wanted a theoretical framework that 
would both make sense to teachers and that 
had strong empirical support. Helen Patrick 
(in press) explains this very well in a recent 
chapter. She argues that some motivation 
constructs “lend themselves to practical 
application better than others” and that 
“motivation researchers could better meet 
teachers’ needs if researchers began with 
issues or questions that teachers themselves 
identify as important and relevant to their 
teaching” (p. 8). Thus, the motivational 
framework I chose was a hybrid, derived 
from two existing theories, self- 
determination and interest, and more 
relevant to classroom reality. This was a 
departure from traditional motivation 
research where researchers mostly worked 
within one theory and some even worked 
within one theory for a career, but without 
documented value for communicating with 
teachers. This hybrid theory focused on 
student engagement, the teachers’ main 
concern. It proposed that students are 
motivated to learn when they feel competent, 
are granted some autonomy, feel that they 
belong in the classroom, and when their 

learning is meaningful. I placed emphasis on 
why these features of instruction would be 
motivational and how certain instructional 
practices could support student competence, 
autonomy, belongingness and meaningful 
learning. We also discussed how teachers 
could tell if a student felt competent; for 
example, by greater participation. 
Participation was one thing all teachers 
wanted. At the end of each meeting, 
teachers agreed to try out some of the 
instructional practices we had discussed. 
These ideas were clearly new to the teachers. 
At the outset of the project, the tools they 
used were mostly extrinsic, like offering 
praise and rewards. When that failed, some 
resorted to threats and punishments. I was 
suggesting that they might think differently 
and that they risk trying new practices. I 
didn’t know if teachers would be receptive 
to this approach, but I risked it because I 
thought they would see differences in their 
students’ engagement. And their current 
practices weren’t working! 

 

The methods also included observing 
and videotaping teachers’ instruction. I then 
edited the video to several classroom events 
and discussed the lesson with the teachers. I 
was interested in the instructional decisions 
teachers had made and how the teacher 
viewed student responses in terms of 
motivation and of learning. I also conducted 
interviews with each teacher at the 
beginning and end of the project. This 
multi-method approach proved fruitful not 
only as a validity check, but also as insight 
into teachers’ thoughts and fears about 
changing familiar instructional practices. 

In Turner et al. (2011), we described 
three teachers who participated. All three 
teachers tried to learn the new concepts and 

 

I was asking them to think differently 

and to risk trying new practices. I 

didn’t know if teachers would be 

receptive to this approach, but it was 

a risk I needed to take because my 

goal was to make a difference. 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 10 
 

 
 

to apply new instructional strategies. 
Although each teacher took a different path, 
their efficacy proved to be central in their 
success, both as an obstacle and as a 
validation of change when they observed the 
positive results with their students. One 
obstacle, a challenge to their efficacy, was 
fear of losing control if new strategies 
backfired. The monthly meetings in which 
teachers asked questions and discussed their 
experiences provided some support when 
obstacles surfaced. Incidentally, it was 
unusual in schools at this time for teachers 
to be able to meet to discuss instruction, 
and so this support made a difference. Also 
important to their journeys was the 
dissatisfaction they felt with current 
practice. As one teacher put it, her 
instruction was “so stinkin’ borin’ that 
[students] don’t care about it anymore.” 

Working with teachers this way was 
both exhilarating and humbling. It was 
exhilarating to be able to hear their 
reflections, see their growing understanding, 
and then see them put changes into practice. 
In most cases, those new practices produced 
visible changes in terms of student 
engagement, the teachers’ goal. It was 
humbling to learn about the challenges that 
teachers faced on a daily basis from school, 
district and national policies. This was a 
time of intense pressure from standardized 
testing as a result of No Child Left Behind. 

This study marked a turning point in my 
career. For once, I was changing the script 
because I wanted to! My research had 
changed from observing and analyzing to 
establishing relationships and supporting 
teachers who also had to manage myriad 
stresses in their professional lives. Out of 
the four teachers who participated regularly, 
two made significant changes and two did 
not. Many researchers would call that year- 
long effort a waste of time. Not me. I had 
become interested in motivation because of 
my experience with my own students. I was 
in this profession because I wanted to make 
a difference with real people – students and 
teachers in school – and I believed that we 
needed to be in classrooms with them to 

make it possible. Maybe I was finally 
realizing what I wanted to do. 

Scaling it Up 

Reflecting on my final project and the 
second phase of my research career, it seems 
overly ambitious, and perhaps it was. This 
time, we had the opportunity to collaborate 
with an entire school with the goal of giving 
teachers tools to support their students’ 
engagement. Our research questions 
focused on whether and how our 
professional development could help 
teachers change instructional patterns and 
whether student engagement changed as a 
result. As I detail below, this project stands 
out as a culmination of the research I had 
been doing since the beginning. 

We conducted this three-year project at 
a local, mostly rural, middle school. For the 
first time in my research career, the principal 
actively supported our work. She committed 
all the teachers in the school to the project. 
Although this was a boon to the research – 
all teachers could participate, creating 
opportunities for sharing and discussion – it 
was also an impediment because teachers 
did not have a choice about participating. 
This dilemma would persist throughout the 
project and is part of the challenge of doing 
professional development in schools. 

 

In the first year, we introduced the same 
four motivational principles from the earlier 
project to teachers who met in content area 
groups. Teachers were encouraged to try 
strategies in their classrooms and to report 
back to their groups. As in the previous 
study, it was challenging for teachers to both 
try new strategies and to adapt them to their 
content areas, as it challenged teachers’ 
efficacy. For example, one teacher admitted 

…we helped teachers form 

professional learning communities 

(PLCs) [and] in the project’s final 

year, the school’s rating from the 

state moved from a “D” to an “A,” 

based on student achievement. 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 11 
 

 
 

that she did not know how to ask open- 
ended questions. Because the principal had 
committed the teachers to participate, some 
teachers were seemingly defensive, publicly 
dismissive of the project, complained about 
time away from the classroom, and sought 
to sabotage the project in small ways. It also 
challenged some teachers’ epistemological 
beliefs, because our approach contradicted 
many of their beliefs about learning and 
motivation. As a result, this project required 
us to assess continuously how teachers were 
accepting and evaluating our professional 
development and how to craft it to be more 
meaningful to and supportive of them. 
Therefore, we adapted our approach as we 
went. 

We were well aware that short term 
interventions are not effective in changing 
practice and that it takes time for teachers to 
develop both new practices and their 
rationales. We were also cognizant that most 
teachers had few opportunities to 
collaborate with and learn from colleagues. 
Therefore, in the second and third years of 
the project, we helped teachers form 
professional learning communities (PLCs). 
The objective was to foster teacher 
ownership of new instructional practices in 
a supportive setting. PLCs were a new 
concept for the teachers. It wasn’t familiar 
to discuss instruction in terms of supporting 
student engagement. Teachers were more 
accustomed to informal conversations about 
“tips and tricks” or to commiserating with 
peers about shared problems. Therefore, in 
some groups, discussions morphed into 
complaint sessions about students and 
parents. In others, teachers reminisced 
about how “it used to be,” recalling a 
principal who had showered them with 
appreciation. In these cases, we tried to walk 
the line between acknowledging teacher 
autonomy and trying to refocus their 
concerns to the engagement principles and 
their instruction. But, in other instances, 
teachers sincerely grappled with how to re- 
imagine their instruction and shared 
problems and solutions. The PLCs seemed 
to provide some support for teachers to 
think about how their instruction met their 

students’ needs. As evidence, in the project’s 
final year, the school’s rating from the state 
moved from a “D” to an “A,” based on 
student achievement (Turner et al., 2017). 

The central question of this 
collaborative professional development 
project was to test whether teachers would 
find it meaningful to adapt theoretically 
supported instructional strategies and 
whether such instruction could increase 
student engagement. Among our six 
observed teachers, half showed real change 
in instructional practices and their students 
demonstrated increased engagement for 3 
consecutive years. The other half of the 
observed teachers did not change practices 
and student engagement did not increase 
(Turner et al., 2014). However, the observed 
teachers were a small subset of the teachers 
involved in the research and we can guess 
that teacher interaction might have helped 
support the ideas and practices that all the 
teachers had an opportunity to learn. This 
“in the trenches” kind of research is hard 
work for both teachers and researchers, but 
I remain convinced that it is worth the 
effort if the goal is to support teachers and 
their students in learning. 

Reconceptualizing Engagement: 
Methodological Advances 

The project described above represented 
a major change in my thinking about how to 
conceptualize and measure engagement in 
the classroom. As I mentioned, I had been 
dissatisfied for a while with the methods we 
used with the teacher as the unit of analysis. 

Although the coding of scaffolding 
discourse was based on teachers’ responses 
to students and thus included student 
uptake implicitly, we were still measuring 
students’ perceptions, not their actions and 
interactions. I sought for ways to measure 
teacher-student interaction directly because 
I believed it was the real measure of 
classroom engagement. Tharp and 
Gallimore’s (1988) notion of teaching as 
“assisted performance” and teacher-student 
interaction as “joint participation” (Tharp et 
al., 2000) provided a theoretical framework 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 12 
 

 
 

upon which to base an observation tool that 
could document how engagement was 
happening in classrooms. We adopted two 
measures for classroom observation that 
considered teachers and students acting 
together. Instead of a static description, the 
data were dynamic. They depicted how 
teachers offered opportunities for engagement 
and how students took them up over real time 
in classrooms (Turner et al. 2014). Dynamic 
Systems theory (Koopmans, 2020; Lewis, 
2000) helped us conceptualize how patterns 
in teacher-student interaction emerge and 
change over time. State space grids 
(Hollenstein, 2007) were a wonderful visual 
tool that enabled us to display dynamic 
patterns of teacher-student interaction and 
provided the evidence of change in our 
observed classrooms. Not only did we know 
what teachers said and did but we now also 
had evidence of how students responded. 
We also wrote specifically about the utility 
of state space grids as a methodological tool 
to portray classroom interaction (Turner & 
Christensen, 2020). This work was the most 
thrilling and satisfying that I have done. The 
tools we used were well suited to the 
research questions, asking not just if, but 
how change happens. This pursuit, 
documenting how and why change happens, 
has been the goal of my research career 
because I believe that if we can help 
teachers improve their classroom 
instruction, we can make learning more 
engaging for all students. 

Contributions to Motivation Research 

My contribution centers on the 
animating goal of my career, which is to 
understand classrooms better and to 
collaborate with teachers to improve 
learning and motivation for students. All of 
my research, starting with my dissertation, 
was conducted in classrooms. Looking back, 
I realize that my colleagues Helen Patrick, 
Deb Meyer and I had been greatly 
influenced by other work in classrooms by 
Jere Brophy, Tom Good and Walter Doyle 
and by Deborah Stipek and Phyllis 
Blumenfeld’s motivation research in 

classrooms. Following these pioneers, we 

 

 

emphasized the importance of putting 
“context” in the foreground in studying 
students’ motivated learning in classrooms 
(Turner & Meyer, 2000). This contrasted 
with a lot of motivation research that placed 
context in the background while 
foregrounding the individual. We have 
always contended that you cannot separate 
individuals from their situations. We have 
referred to this approach as “situated” 
(Turner, 1993; Turner & Nolen, 2015). 
Thanks to our work and that of others, 
notably learning scientists, that word and 
concept has caught on to some extent. For 
example, Expectancy-Value theory is now 
Situated Expectancy Value theory (Eccles & 
Wigfield, 2020). 

Although many motivation researchers 
at the time were asking the question, “What 
influences students’ motivation to learn in 
the classroom?” my work differed in the 
way I investigated the question. As I 
mentioned, many other researchers were 
answering that question via theory. For 
example, students who perceived a mastery 
classroom goal structure also reported 
desirable beliefs like efficacy. While still 
making use of such generative theory, my 
goal was to put flesh on the bones of that 
theory. How do teachers send messages 
about the goal structure of the classroom? 
How do teachers support efficacy? I settled 
on one pervasive experience, their 
classroom instruction. My research placed 
instruction at the center because teachers 
and students spend most of their time 
together during instruction. As such, it must 
be important to motivation. Asking about 
the quality of instruction naturally turned 
attention to teachers – what they did, what 
they knew about the effects of instructional 
practice on their students, and whether they 

It is easy to prescribe remedies or 

implications for classrooms if one 

does not have to understand their 

complexities. Everything affects how 

teachers and students interact and 

creates the unique culture of their 

classroom. 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 13 
 

 
 

could change practices. Thus, each study I 
did provided new understandings leading to 
new questions. The second half of my career 
was spent collaborating with teachers to 
understand how they thought about 
motivation and to sharing strategies that I 
hoped would support their instruction. 

I believe that the value of being in the 
classroom as opposed to viewing classrooms 
through data, is to help convey their 
complexity. It is easy to prescribe remedies 
or implications for classrooms if one does 
not have to understand their complexities. 
Everything – from classroom management 
to instruction to student diversity to testing 
– affects how teachers and students interact 
and creates the unique culture of their 
classroom. One of my contributions has 
been to shine a small light on how teachers’ 
instruction contributes to that motivational 
mix. 

A second contribution is to expand 
thinking about theory. When I began my 
career, certain motivation theories were 
dominant and researchers identified with 
one theory or another. As I did more 
research in real classrooms and talked to 
teachers, it became clear to me that no 
single theory adequately captured the 
classroom experience. Rather than let theory 
define how one characterized classrooms, it 
seemed more useful to let classrooms 
suggest which theories might serve them 
best. In my later classroom studies, I 
married elements of different theories – 
self-determination and interest – that 
elucidated the classroom experience and 
made sense to teachers. Also, with my focus 
on instruction, I needed theories that would 
explain not just motivation, but also 
learning. I saw this inattention to learning as 
a weakness in motivation theory. The 
scaffolding theory of instruction, as 
conceptualized by Deb Meyer, added an 
explanatory link between teacher instruction 
and student motivation. Finally, I realized 
that motivation theory alone was inadequate 
to answer my research questions about 
change. Learning about dynamic systems 
theory (Turner et al., 2014) was a very 

 

 

 
fruitful addition to my theoretical 
framework and opened up many new 
understandings about how behavior 
emerges and changes in human settings. In 
sum, as my research developed, I became 
more convinced about the value of 
interdisciplinary perspectives because they 
contributed the kinds of insights into 
classrooms that the research could offer. 

A third contribution is the adoption of 
methodologies that can answer the how and 
why questions I have asked. Classroom 
observation has been at the center of my 
work. I believe you have to be there to really 
understand the dynamics of a classroom. 
This is hard work and very time consuming. 
Many researchers eschew this approach, 
wanting something more “efficient” and 
yielding a larger pool of data. I have found 
observation to be both revelatory and 
rewarding. We have used various 
observation frameworks based on different 
theories of instruction and interaction, 
depending on research questions. Over 
time, my methods have changed from 
measuring motivation as somewhat static to 
dynamic. Static measures of what teachers 
did showed why students were engaged (or 
not). Dynamic measures enabled us to 
explain how behavior and engagement 
changed over time. For example, in Turner 
et al (2014), our theory of change posited 
that teacher-student interaction during 
instruction was related to student 
engagement. Our observation instrument 
measured teachers and students acting 
together (e.g., in dialogue) rather than 
separately (Rivera et al., 1999). Our question 
about whether the professional 
development we offered teachers could help 
alter teacher instruction and student 

Classroom observation has been at 

the center of my work. Many 

researchers eschew this approach, 

wanting something more “efficient” 

and yielding a larger pool of data. I 

have found observation to be both 

revelatory and rewarding. 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 14 
 

 
 

engagement required a way to measure 
change. State space grids enabled us to 
document changes in teacher-student 
interaction over three years, and the changes 
(or lack thereof) were able to demonstrate 
the efficacy of the intervention. Finally, I 
have always used mixed methods because I 
thought they were both necessary to answer 
my questions and because they were useful 
in triangulating data. For instance, one type 
of data (e.g., observation) could help 
support other data like student self-reports. 
Mixed methods also make richer 
descriptions of the classroom possible, 
enabling deeper understandings of how 
classroom cultures emerge and change. 

Methodology has always been an 
important topic in educational psychology 
and motivation research, but more often it is 
focused on quantitative approaches. It is still 
common today for doctoral programs to 
emphasize quantitative studies that produce 
large, fast results. In contrast, qualitative 
methods take time, which can hinder 
professional advancement in a publish or 

perish world. But research in classrooms 
requires some qualitative work and it affords 
a nuanced view not possible with 
quantitative-only approaches. Qualitative 
and mixed methods enable the investigation 
of different questions, as I have 
demonstrated. Unfortunately, these methods 
have received less attention to the detriment 
of our deep understanding of teachers, 
students and classrooms. I urge researchers 
interested in classrooms to explore the 
benefits of such approaches. 

As I look back over my very rewarding 
career, I have learned a few lessons that 
might be helpful to others just beginning. 
First, follow your own path. Don’t be afraid 
to pursue what you think is important, 
regardless of the fashion. Possibly because I 
was a teacher, I have always thought that the 
classroom was a necessary site for 
motivation research. My approach never has 
been mainstream in motivation research and 
it is still not today. I have been recognized 
as a pioneer in this field, which is gratifying. 
But there is still a dearth of motivation 
research that investigates how the stuff of 
classroom life – instruction, materials, 
relationships, culture and historical 
antecedents – influence students’ motivation 
and learning. As I noted, I believe that there 
is still strong pressure on graduate students 
in educational psychology and motivation to 
focus on the latest quantitative methods 
(first) and formulate research questions that 
can be measured with these methodologies 
(second). This well-intentioned advice 
privileges technical innovation (often related 
to publication) over asking other valuable 
questions that can inform schooling for 
both students and teachers. 

Second, take those risks that resonate 
with the questions you want to ask. Because 
classroom research was not mainstream at 
the time I did it, I had no assurance that my 
work would be publishable in the outlets 
that educational psychologists respected. 
Amazingly, I don’t think I thought about 
that risk at the time. I was so committed to 
what I wanted to learn and to its importance 
that I did the study, and then I thought 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Figure 6. Educational Psychologist, an academic 
journal where I have published 



If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 15 
 

 
 

about publication. Each study seems to have 
been a bigger risk than its predecessor. The 
two studies based in teacher professional 
development took years and might have 
proved unsuccessful. I needed good 
publications because that affected my 
professional advancement. I believe that 
capitalizing on what I learned from each 
previous study did provide me with rich 
information to help design the next one, and 
thus to make the case for their importance. 

Third, emphasize quality over quantity. 
In presenting my cases for tenure and 
promotion, I argued that fewer rich, high- 
quality research studies are just as (or more) 
valuable than a large number of 
publications. Because many departments still 
use quantity as a metric, learning to defend 
the value of fewer publications is an 
important skill for those who do 
longitudinal and time-intensive research. It 
is also important to learn to explain what 
the “quality” of your work is. Despite this 
path less taken, I have had success 
publishing in well-regarded journals like 
Journal of Educational Psychology, Educational 
Psychologist and the American Educational 
Research Journal. I attribute that success to 
making a strong case for the importance of 
the research and to innovative methodology. 

Fourth, if you don’t get the grant, move 
to Plan B. The emphasis on grants is 
overwhelming today in academe. But you 
won’t get every grant you apply for, and you 
may get none. If you don’t get the grant, 
figure out how to do the research anyway. I 
received one large grant from the Spencer 
Foundation, but all the rest of my research 
has depended on figuring out resources on 
my own. I built my own research 
community by establishing relationships 
with districts and schools, enlisting graduate 
school colleagues like Deb Meyer, Helen 
Patrick, Tim Urdan and Eric Anderman as 
fellow researchers, using graduate students 
as co-researchers, and spending a good deal 
of my time in the classroom as well. 

It is never certain how research 
partnerships will work or develop. My 
experience has been immensely positive. 

This is due in no small part to the work 
ethic, collaborative and generous instincts, 
and original minds of my colleagues. 
Although sometimes our partnerships were 
born of necessity (and shared interests), they 
have grown and flowered into a strong 
intellectual bond where we learn with and 
from each other. For example, working with 
Deb Meyer and Helen Patrick on the 
Spencer project led us to new insights, 
which we developed into more theoretically 
oriented pieces. At this moment, I am able 
to share Helen’s thinking on classroom 
research with teachers, developed in her 
own work, and I am collaborating with Deb 
on a book on classroom research. Shared 
interest in classroom research has also 
opened up opportunities to work with other 
colleagues like Nancy Perry and Susan 
Nolen, very enriching partnerships. Finally, 
our research at Notre Dame owes a great 
deal to my former graduate student and 
colleague, Andrea Christensen, who 
contributed to every part of our work there. 
These approaches might have been tailored 
to the kind of local research I conducted, 
but it worked when resources were scant. 

 

Figure 7. 2013 AERA annual dinner of our group 
called "Women in Motivation" including (L to R in 
back) me, Shirley Wu, Deb Meyer, Lynley Anderman, 
Allison Ryan and Helen Patrick (in front) 



Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 16 
 

 
 

Fifth, cultivate relationships with 
schools. If you are interested in research in 
schools or classrooms, think about how to 
present your research as meeting a pressing 
need. I found that “motivating students” 
was a compelling teacher need and helped 
me gain entry into schools. Also, establish 
relationships with schools early in your 
career. You could start with research with 
one interested teacher. Even work with one 
teacher enables you to learn a lot about 
teachers, students and classrooms, gets you 
into a school where you can meet others 
and begins to establish your credibility as a 
trusted collaborator. 

Finally, don’t give up. As I related, my 
move to Notre Dame was the most 
challenging experience of my professional 
life. Because I had to make it work, I looked 
outside the box for ways to succeed. In 
research, this involved forging partnerships 
with aforementioned colleagues outside of 
my university. In promotion and tenure, I 
relied on the support of university 
colleagues outside my department to 
recognize my accomplishments. Eventually, 
I was able to use this recognition to gain 
tenure in Psychology and finally to achieve 

full professor. Although circumstances will 
vary for individuals, finding an alternate 
solution to problems can work and did work 
for me. When the script isn’t working, 
change the script so that it works for you. 

 

Figure 8. Christmas 2021 with one of my three 
grandsons 

 
 

 
 

References 

Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2020). From 
expectancy-value theory to situated 
expectancy-value theory: A 
developmental, social cognitive, and 
sociocultural perspective on motivation. 
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.202 
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Hollenstein, T. (2007). State space grids: 
Analyzing dynamics across 
development. International Journal of 
Behavioral Development, 31, 384–396. 

Koopmans, M. (2020). Education is a 
complex dynamical system: Challenges 
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https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.201 
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Lamey, A., Hollenstein, T., Lewis, M. D., & 
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Lewis, M. D. (2000). The promise of 
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integrated account of human 
development. Child Development, 71, 36– 
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Patrick, H. (in press). Most motivation 
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Reeve (Eds.), Motivation science: 
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Rivera, H., Tharp, R. G., Youpa, D. G., 
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http://statespacegrids.org/


 

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of California, Center for Research on 
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Tharp, R. G., Estrada, P., Dalton, S. S., & 
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(2017). The development of professional 
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Educational Psychologist, 35, 69-85. 

Turner, J. C., Meyer, D. K., Cox, K. E., 
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Acquired Wisdom/Education Review 18 
 

 

 

About Acquired Wisdom 
 

This collection began with an invitation 
to one of the editors, Sigmund Tobias, from 
Norman Shapiro a former colleague at the 
City College of New York (CCNY). Shapiro 
invited retired CCNY faculty members to 
prepare manuscripts describing what they 
learned during their College careers that 
could be of value to new appointees and 
former colleagues. It seemed to us that a 
project describing the experiences of 
internationally known and distinguished 
researchers in Educational Psychology and 
Educational Research would be of benefit to 
many colleagues, especially younger ones 
entering those disciplines. We decided to 
include senior scholars in the fields of adult 
learning and training because , although 
often neglected by educational researchers, 
their work is quite relevant to our fields and 
graduate students could find productive and 
gainful positions in that area. 

Junior faculty and grad students in 
Educational Psychology, Educational 
Research, and related disciplines, could learn 
much from the experiences of senior 
researchers. Doctoral students are exposed 
to courses or seminars about history of the 
discipline as well as the field’s overarching 
purposes and its important contributors. 

A second audience for this project 
includes the practitioners and researchers in 
disciplines represented by the chapter 
authors. This audience could learn from the 
experiences of eminent researchers – how 

 

their experiences shaped their work, and 
what they see as their major contributions – 
and readers might relate their own work to 
that of the scholars. Authors were advised 
that they were free to organize their 
chapters as they saw fit, provided that their 
manuscripts contained these elements: 1) 
their perceived major contributions to the 
discipline, 2) major lessons learned during 
their careers, 3) their opinions about the 
personal and 4) situational factors 
(institutions and other affiliations, 
colleagues, advisors, and advisees) that 
stimulated their significant work. 

We hope that the contributions of 
distinguished researchers receive the wide 
readership they deserve and serves as a 
resource to the future practitioners and 
researchers in these fields. 



 

If the Script Doesn’t Work, Change the Script 19 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Frederick Erickson 

 

University of California at 

Los Angeles 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Acquired Wisdom Series Editors 

Sonia Nieto 

University of 

Massachusetts, Amhurst 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Phil Winne 

 

Simon Fraser University 

 
 

 

Former Editors 

Sigmund Tobias, State University of New York at Albany 
J. D. Fletcher, Institute for Defense Analyses 

David Berliner, Arizona State University 
 

Advisory Board Members 
Gustavo Fischman, Arizona State University 

Arthur C. Graesser III, Memphis State University 
Teresa L. McCarty, University of California Los Angeles 

Kevin Welner, University of Colorado Boulder 
 

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