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Spotlight: Jacquelynne Sue Eccles
Right Place, Right Time… and So Much More
Distinguished Professor of Education Jacquelynne Sue Eccles has contributed a career’s worth of seminal achievements to the field of educational psychology.
By Phillip Jordan
As Jacquelynne Sue Eccles would have you believe, her legendary career in educational psychology is largely the byproduct of fortuitous timing.
“I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time to take part in three really transformative moments in educational research,” says the UCI School of Education’s Distinguished Professor of education.
But don’t let the modesty fool you. Eccles is one of the leading developmental scientists of her generation, and she’s made monumental contributions to the study of student motivation and after-school programming. Her research is no secret, either. According to Research.com, she’s the second-most-cited motivational scientist in the world, and she’s ranked No. 13 nationally and No. 25 worldwide among all psychological scientists.
So, yes, Eccles’ career timing may be impeccable, but so, too, is her intellectual curiosity, investigative research and work ethic. To wit, those three “right place, right time” moments include: • Developing a seminal theory on the motivations behind students’ academic and career choices — the Expectancy-Value Theory that’s often referred to simply by Eccles’ name. • Conducting research on students’ psychological, social and physical development that led to major reforms of the junior high school model of education in the 1980s and 1990s. • Chairing a 2003 National Research Council committee that authored a game-changing report outlining the most effective after-school programs to meet the developmental needs of adolescent students.
“Essentially, I’ve spent my career studying why people do what they do,” Eccles says. “What they choose to study, what they want to pursue. And then thinking about how we as educators can help meet their developmental needs so they can make the best choices possible for them.”
Eccles cites her background as an early scholar of gender and ethnicity in STEM as the gateway
to much of her research — including, principally, her Expectancy-Value Theory. Eccles and her colleagues developed the theory as a comprehensive “model that can help researchers evaluate the social and psychological influences on how children (and adults) make achievementrelated choices. Along with her longtime collaborator Allan Wigfield — her first postdoctoral research assistant back in 1978 at the University of Michigan — Eccles studied the role families, media and identity play in student choices.
“When we began that research,” Eccles says, “we were initially interested in what motivated girls to choose careers outside certain STEM fields. Then, it got much broader about what students choose to engage in, from careers to college majors and a wide range of pursuits.”
Eccles’ Expectancy-Value Theory remains in widespread use today. In fact, Eccles spent part of her summer this year in Germany, receiving an honorary degree from the University of Tübingen. There, the university’s Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology grounds its work in Eccles’ theory.
Now, Eccles and Wigfield are writing a book that tells the story of how they developed and refined their groundbreaking theory.
“I’m coming to the end of my career, so I’m interested in weaving it all together,” Eccles says. “The idea is to leave a legacy book that can illustrate and share what we’ve found through our years of work together.”
Eccles is thankful that her career will conclude back in her native California at UCI’s School of Education, where she has taught since 2015. It was here that she began her research as a student in the UC system, advancing far beyond the dreams of her parents — especially her father, who she says was a “dirt-poor farmer” in Oklahoma before joining the U.S. Air Force and taking his family around the world with him.
Those travels sparked a curiosity in Eccles about how different people in different situations make decisions for themselves. Her ensuing education as a first-generation college student led to her own opportunities to traverse the globe, including as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching math and science in Ghana and as one of the first non-Chinese professors to teach in that country once it reopened to the world in the mid-1980s.
Along the way, Eccles’ influence in her field has been profound. Among her many achievements: She has secured more than $20 million in research awards; accepted four honorary degrees; mentored nearly 100 Ph.D. and post-doctoral students; chaired National Science Foundation and MacArthur Foundation committees; received four lifetime achievement awards; and been honored with the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for “outstanding contributions to the development and integration of psychological research and social action.”
Above it all, though, Eccles might be proudest of the fact that she did all of this as a divorced single mom, raising two beloved children.
“I love my job and I love my children,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I was able to travel, to work with amazing colleagues all over the world. And nothing beats working with students in the classroom. It’s been endlessly fascinating and I’m thankful for all of it.”
