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Ellen Skinner, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Development and Psychology
Associate Chair, Department of Psychology
Biography
Research Interests
- Life-span developmental psychology. Developmental systems theory.
- Dynamics of motivational development during childhood and early adolescence.
- Development of coping.
- Study of how self-system processes promote engagement and become motivational resources for children's coping with obstacles and setbacks.
- Special focus on how social contexts and close relationships make it easier (or harder) for children to cope adaptively.
- Interest in theory development and measurement construction.
Background. I was trained as a life-span
developmental psychologist at the Pennsylvania State University,
teaching at the laboratory preschool and focusing on the study of
"curiosity and "enthusiasm." After four years, I received my Ph.D. in
Human Development in 1981. I spent the next seven years as a Research
Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and
Education in Berlin, Germany, where I was part of a research team,
including Michael Chapman and Paul Baltes, that developed a new
conceptualization of children's perceived control (confidence and
efficacy), studied the differential development of its components
during elementary school, and investigated its role in children's
achievement in school; I received tenure there in 1983. In 1988, I
moved to the University of Rochester to work with the Motivation
Research Group (MRG) in the Department of Psychology and the College
of Education and Human Development, where I received tenure in
1990. Through working with the other members of the MRG, including
Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and James Connell, my perspective broadened
to elaborate the components of "engagement" and to incorporate key
self-system processes in addition to perceived control or competence,
specifically perceived autonomy and a sense of relatedness. These
constructs became critical ingredients as we developed our
motivational theory of coping (with James Wellborn). I moved to
Portland State University in the Fall of 1992, where I was promoted to
Full Professor in 1996. Here at PSU, I have continued to work with
teams of faculty, post-docs, and graduate and undergraduate students,
pursuing empirical and theoretical questions about motivation, the
self, engagement, and coping during childhood and adolescence.
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