The American school system currently faces gaps in achievement between its low-income, minority students and their higher-income, white peers. These gaps exist both in academic and socioemotional skills, are present by kindergarten entry, and persist throughout students' school careers. One proposed strategy through which these gaps may be reduced is through the promotion of student motivation and engagement. In the primary and secondary school settings, these constructs are promoted through teachers' motivational support of students' psychological needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence. However, the development of these factors prior to kindergarten entry has not been as well studied. Data from 333 students and their 98 preschool classrooms were used to examine whether highly motivationally supportive preschool experiences can buffer the negative effects of risk in order to support the development of a high sense of motivation and engagement that is sustained across the transition to kindergarten. In terms of normative changes, results indicated that both engagement and disaffection declined across the kindergarten transition. High maternal education was a consistent predictor of increases in engagement and motivation and declines in disaffection across the kindergarten transition. While need support did not consistently buffer the loss of engagement or enhance declines in disaffection, it did seem particularly beneficial for boys, whose motivation and disaffection outcomes tended to improve after preschool experiences characterized by high warmth. Additionally, children's declines in frustration across the kindergarten transition were enhanced by well-structured preschool experiences. Details of analyses, results, strengths, limitations, and implications for future research are discussed.

In recent years students' academic engagement has gained increasing favor as a necessary component of authentic learning experiences. However, less research has focused on what students do when they run into everyday problems in school that allows them to return (or not) to a state of ongoing engagement. Expanding on these ideas, this project explores students' motivational resilience in school, that is, the dynamic interactions among their ongoing engagement, emotional reactivity, academic coping, and re-engagement after encounters with difficulties and setbacks in school. Grounded in an established motivational model based on Deci & Ryan's (1985) self-determination theory, and building on earlier studies suggesting that these components of motivational resilience form self-reinforcing internal dynamics (Skinner, Pitzer, & Steele, 2015), this project comprises two free-standing manuscripts that examined key components of this process. Study 1 explored the external dynamics of motivational resilience within a single school year to identify the extent to which outside forces (e.g., students' experiences of teacher support and self-system processes) can shape students' motivational systems which tend to be self-sustaining. The study used data from 1020 3rd through 6th grade students to examine feedforward and feedback effects between students' composite motivational resilience and a set of hypothesized antecedents and consequences, and also investigated whether teacher support can shift established motivational patterns. Study 2 looked more closely at motivational resilience and its antecedents and consequences as students made the transition from elementary to middle school. Data following 281 students as they moved from fifth to sixth grade were used to test a structural model examining the extent to which students' ongoing engagement and teacher support act as resources that encourage adaptive coping and re-engagement, which then lead to continued engagement and subsequent achievement. Students' coping was explored as a particularly important mediator between students' resources at the beginning of fifth grade and their subsequent motivational actions and achievement. The study also examined differences in patterns of motivation across the transition for students who had high levels of teacher support and adaptive coping profiles as compared with students who had fewer of such resources. This project provides a deeper understanding of students' experiences in dealing with everyday challenges and struggles in school, especially during the transition to middle school. Discussion focuses on the utility and potential drawbacks of examining the individual components of students' motivational resilience through this conceptual lens, with suggestions for next steps for future research. Implications of this model for improving students' academic development highlight the important role teachers can play in supporting or undermining students' ability to bounce back after encounters with setbacks.