School of Education
Research Interests
Anna-Lena Dicke is interested in understanding the driving factors and benefits of students’ interest, motivation, and engagement. Anna-Lena’s work examines how structural features of the school environment (e.g. tracking) and instructional features of the school environment (e.g. teacher support) influence students’ motivational well-being. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, she has also been involved with an intervention study aiming to foster secondary school students’ motivation and achievement in mathematics by demonstrating the utility of mathematics for students’ future lives. In addition, Anna-Lena is focused on improving the assessment and validation of motivational measures to better understand the nature of the underlying constructs. In her work at the School of Education, Anna-Lena will be using longitudinal datasets to continue her investigation of the underlying motivational mechanisms determining students’ educational pathways. She will examine how features of the school environment that students experience on an everyday basis influence not only their academic success but also their educational, career, and life choices in the short- and long-term.
Biography
Anna-Lena received her B.A. in English and American Studies and Psychology from the University of Freiburg, Germany. Pursuing her interest in educational psychology, she then focused on the development of talent in education, graduating from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany with an M.A. in Psychology. Broadening her focus, she then moved to the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tuebingen, Germany, where she worked with Dr. Ulrich Trautwein on several large-scale educational studies. She completed her Ph.D. dissertation titled “Students’ Academic Interests: Influences of Academic Tracking, Curriculum and the Teacher” in 2013.
Publications
Trautwein, U., Dumont, H. & Dicke, A.-L. (in press). Schooling: Impact on Cognitive and Motivational Development. In International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd Ed.).
Gaspard, H., Dicke, A.-L., Flunger, B., Schreier, B., Häfner, I., Trautwein, U., & Nagengast, B. (accepted). More value through greater differentiation: Gender differences in value beliefs about math. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Trautwein, U., Nagengast, B., Marsh, H. W., Gaspard, H., Dicke, A.-L., Lüdtke, O., et al. (2013). Expectancy-value theory revisited: From expectancy-value theory to expectancy-valueS theory? In D. M. McInerney, H. W. Marsh, R. G. Craven, & F. Guay (Eds.), Theory Driving Research: New wave perspectives on self-processes and human development (pp. 233-249). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Frenzel, A. C., Pekrun, R., Dicke, A.-L., & Götz, T. (2012). Beyond quantitative decline: Conceptual shifts in adolescents’ development of interest in mathematics. Developmental Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0026895
Dicke, A.-L., Lüdtke, O., Trautwein, U., Nagy, G., & Nagy, N. (2012). Judging students’ achievement goal orientations: Are teacher ratings accurate? Learning and Individual Differences. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2012.04.004