Cynthia Hudley of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School publishes new book about academic motivation

Cynthia Hudley of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, with Adele E. Gottfried, a professor of education at Cal State Northridge, has published Academic Motivation and the Culture of Schooling (Oxford University Press, 2008). The volume’s contributors consider the role of school in shaping academic motivation in students from elementary school through college, with particular attention to students who are not well served by public education.

Decades of research indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in homogenous American schools that assume culture is a characteristic of the child rather than the institution. This volume argues that school culture is a reflection of the society in which the school is embedded and comprises various aspects, including individualism, competition, cultural stereotypes, and extrinsically guided values and rewards. The book’s articles address three specific conceptual questions: How do differences in academic motivation for diverse groups of students change over time? How do students’ social cognitions influence their motivational processes and outcomes in school? And what has been done to enhance academic motivation?

Dr. Hudley is a professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School. She has also served as Associate Dean of the UCSB Graduate Division. Her scholarship addresses children’s social development, with a specific focus on aggressive behavior and achievement motivation. Hudley has developed an aggression reduction curriculum, the BrainPower program, to improve peer relations in elementary school and is completing a volume for Yale University press that details the BrainPower curriculum. She has also served a co-editor of a volume on scholarship pertaining to the African-American experience, where she served as section editor on education and psychology.

In addition, Hudley has sat on several national advisory committees relevant to youth development, including an advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that investigated disproportionate minority confinement among the incarcerated juvenile population. She is a Vice President of the American Educational Research Association, a member of the Board of Educational Affairs of the American Psychological Association, a past president for the national Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists, and a member of a number of editorial boards of scholarly journals. She serves locally as the vice president of the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Youth Committee (EYC) and is a member of the executive board of the Mayme A. Clayton Library, Museum, and Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Prior to her academic career, Hudley spent 15 years as a professional educator, working with students with learning disorders and emotional disturbances at the middle school and high school levels, as well as with incarcerated juvenile populations.

[Cynthia Hudley is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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Cynthia Hudley of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School publishes new book about academic motivation