Chapter 12: Learning Together: The Educational Experiences of Adolescents in Moscow

Over the course of more than 30 years, research on achievement motivation has decisively established that students’ learning beliefs have a profound influence on their achievement-related cognitions and behavior, including their learning goals, attributions for success and failure, self-regulatory strategies, and academic outcomes (Covington & Dray, 2002; Dweck, 1999; Eccles, Roeser, Vida, Fredricks, & Wigfield, 2006; Elliot & Mapes, 2005; Weiner, 2005; Zimmerman, 1989). For researchers interested in the origin of achievement beliefs, culture, or more specifically, how “mind comes under the sway of culture” (Bruner, 2008, p. 29), is central to inquiry.

Culture—shared beliefs, expectations, and values—guides both selfconstrual and socialization practices. Yet culture itself is coconstructed and indeed negotiated through social interactions in context. The development of attitudes and values is very much a reflection of the individual and the cultural context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In other words, the ways in which individuals make meaning of their everyday experiences is influenced not only by their cultural and sociohistorical context, but also by the social interactions through which meaning is negotiated (Haste, 2009; Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978).