35 years of research on students' subjective task values and motivation: A look back and a look forward

We discuss the development of Eccles, Wigfield, and colleagues' expectancy-value model of achievement motivation (now called SEVT for situated expectancy value theory) and review the research on the part of the model that concerns the development of children's expectancies and values and their relations to performance and activity choice. We focus primarily on subjective task value (STV), first discussing the definition of its different components (intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and perceived cost) and how they develop across the childhood and adolescent years. We discuss relations among these components and the notion of “hierarchies of values” as being especially important for activity choice. We next turn to discussion of sources of influences on task values and processes by which individuals' STVs take shape. Next is a discussion of how individuals' values and expectancies relate to their activity choice; we discuss both variable-centered and person centered research addressing this issue. Then we discuss expectancy-value theory based interventions that have focused primarily on enhancing individuals' utility values. We close with suggestions for future research.