How do students develop an interest in one academic subject over another? By what mechanisms do they come to believe they have a particular talent for mathematics, literature, or another academic area? These questions concern students’ motivational development, which is associated with many positive outcomes, including their engagement in coursework, persistence in difficult programs, and academic achievement.Situated Expectancy Value Theory is a well-established framework that describes students’ motivational development in terms of subjective beliefs called expectancies, values, and costs. Most empirical studies on these beliefs have focused on how long-term motivational patterns relate to broad outcomes like a student's major selection, achievement, or persistence in a program. While this research has validated the model for explaining long-term motivational development and positive academic outcomes, it has not sufficiently explored the micro-level dynamics of how daily experiences in situ influence these long-term changes. For instance, do a student’s repeated endorsements of the high utility value of statistics homework assignments coalesce into a broader, dispositional belief in the high utility of statistics, generally? Or does a student’s belief in the general utility value of statistics inform the way they perceive the daily tasks they experience in the classroom?In the present study, I explored evidence for ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ developmental mechanisms among a large sample of college students (n=1,125) enrolled in an introductory statistics class. Dispositional motivation for statistics as an academic subject was measured at the beginning and end of the semester via online surveys. Situated beliefs regarding daily content and activities were measured via mobile applications during each class session, resulting in a sample of more than 18,000 intensive longitudinal measurements. These data were used to test cross-level interactions between dispositional (Level 2) and situated (Level 1) motivational beliefs, which were characterized in terms of carryover, trends, and residual variance (reactivity).Results provided strong evidence that the variance in situated expectancies, values, and costs was attributable to both between- and within-person differences. Students' dispositional motivation was associated with situated motivational beliefs, which were in turn associated with changes in students’ dispositional motivation over time. These results provide support for both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ mechanisms of motivational development. Dispositional motivation for statistics was also predictive of certain attributes of situated beliefs (e.g., higher pre-term dispositional attainment and utility value and expectancies predicted lower carryover in situated attainment and utility value and expectancies). Moreover, situated expectancies and values displayed some differences from costs, with high values and expectancies associated with more stable reactions to daily class attributes. Cost models showed an inverse pattern, suggesting differences in how highly situated beliefs crystalized into more invariant forms. This study underscores the complexity of analyzing intensive longitudinal data and proposes new directions for further research on measuring and modeling situated motivation.
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