Motivation in the tertiary art and design studio: A multi-perspectival discourse analysis

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates the nature of motivation in the context of a tertiary art and design studio through a multi-perspectival and mixed methodological study of situated text and talk. Drawing upon the analytical resources of linguistic ethnography, multimodal interaction, and functional linguistics, among others, the study finds that motivation in the studio, while perceived by the tutors in terms of the students’ willingness to complete required project work, is, on further examination, a more complex phenomenon, dynamically related to wider socio-institutional discourses and the students’ conception of their future selves. The paper concludes by reconceptualizing motivation in the art and design studio as a discursively constructed and contested phenomenon, intersubjectively realized across the trajectory of studio genres and inherently related to identity and power. The findings contribute to understandings of motivation, particularly within the context of art and design educational studies.