Hi,

I am currently working on my dissertation for my PhD in Consulting Psychology. I am looking at job characteristics as predictors of motivation to learn & post-training learning. Although, job chracteristics have been heavily researched, and motivation to learn, training effectiveness and learning have all been heavily researched, the schools of thought have never been brought together in one study. Since training practitioners, like ourselves, are on the continuous quest to improve training effectiveness, my goal is to contribute to our field by bridging this gap.

I am currently looking for organizations that would be interested in participating in the research. In order to get the most valid and reliable results, the ideal organization would be training organizations that do several trainings on the same topic with different facilitators and a wide variety of participants (ie., like a spin-selling training).

I know this forum may not be the best place to post this message, but I thought I would give it a try.

If you have any suggestions or contacts that would be interested in hearing more, they can contact me at marisa@interstrength.com

Thank You
Marisa

This sounds like a very worthwhile project - and a very interesting one as well. Could you elaborate a little more about how job characteristics may predict motivation to learn? That's a new concept to me. You're right that a lot of research has been done on motivation to learn, but isn't most of it related to studies conducted with children and college students? I'm currently writing a book on a related topic (modifying the motivation of difficult learners) and the majority of the research seems to be about children/college students.

If I come across companies of interest, I'll let you know. Best of luck with this project!

A relationship clearly established in the training effectiveness and transfer of training literature is the impact training motivation (motivation to learn) has on training outcomes. Several factors, both individual and situational, have been found to influence the amount of training motivation a person experiences. However, a comprehensive model of training motivation predictors has yet to be established. Drawing broadly from other areas in psychological literature, job characteristics have been found to impact the level of internal motivation an employee experiences on the job. Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristic Model of Work Motivation is among the most well-known, influential, and comprehensive theories for explaining how work motivation can be impacted by the characteristics of a job. The model posits the motivating force behind such work outcomes, such as increases in productivity and satisfaction and decreases in turnover and absenteeism, are influenced by five core job dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. As a result, understanding how job characteristics can impact training motivation may be the missing link needed in the training effectiveness and transfer of training literature.

And yes, to answer your question, there has been quite a bit of research around training motivation and motivation to learn in a school setting. However, the Journal of Applied Psychology amongst others has several articles on how those variables relate in the work world.

Good luck!