Interest Matters: The Importance of Promoting Interest in Education

By Judith M. Harackiewicz, Jessi L. Smith, Stacy J. Priniski. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2016

673 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Interest is a powerful motivational process that energizes learning, guides academic and career trajectories, and is essential to academic success. Interest is both a psychological state of attention and affect toward a particular object or topic, and an enduring predisposition to reengage over time. Integrating these two definitions, the four-phase model of interest development guides interventions that promote interest and capitalize on existing interests. Four interest-enhancing interventions seem useful: attention-getting settings, contexts evoking prior individual interest, problem-based learning, and enhancing utility value. Promoting interest can contribute to a more engaged, motivated, learning experience for students.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9484c6d9b9e3f9fd27733debd5a1ac52826639f7

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Crucial problems in arranged the lesson plan of vocational teacher (2021, neutral): “It often happens that the teacher during the learning process loses context [26, 27], far from the discussion, even the accuracy of the time is not quite right.”
The role of reading comprehension in mathematical modelling: improving the construction of a real-world model and interest in Germany and Taiwan (2021, background): “Interest is a domain- or content-specific motivational variable that combines affective and cognitive qualities (Harackiewicz et al., 2016; Schiefele et al., 1992).”
Relations among math self-efficacy, interest, intentions, and achievement: a social cognitive perspective (2018, background): “Indeed, interest theory posits that the experience of interests can promote achievement by increasing engagement and attention (Harackiewicz et al., 2016).”
Interest Development and Its Relation to Curiosity: Needed Neuroscientific Research (2019, background): “…following section, we present background information on a developmental perspective of interest, the four-phase model of interest development (Hidi and Renninger 2006), that we subsequently use to provide a basis for explaining the relation between interest and curiosity (Harackiewicz et al. 2016).”