Situated Sugarcoating: How Policy Contexts Moderate Teachers' Strategies for Motivating Student Behavior

Guided by the lens of the situated expectancy-value theory, we investigate student and educator beliefs about the value of career and technical education (CTE) and industry-based certifications (IBCs). Amid the increasing prioritization of IBCs in state and federal college and career readiness policies, we sought to investigate how students describe their motivation for participating in CTE and IBCs, how educators interpret the value of these experiences and, in turn, shape students' beliefs, and how the broader college and career readiness sociopolitical context may shape these dynamics. Interviews and focus groups with students (n = 68), educators, and administrators (n = 58) at Texas high schools (k = 7) suggest that students highly emphasize the expectancy, intrinsic, attainment, and utility values of their CTE coursework and view IBCs as a beneficial addition, especially for their perceived utility. Educators echoed students' sentiments toward CTE but, in contrast, described truly valuable certifications as "the exception" rather than the norm. Despite this skepticism, they felt an obligation to "sugarcoat" the value of IBCs to students in order to meet college and career readiness or accountability goals. Here, we see that IBCs hold different dimensions of value for different stakeholders, such as the distinction between student-level (e.g., IBCs will help them get a better job) versus educator-level (e.g., students' receipt of IBCs improves school accountability ratings and unlocks incentive funding) utility value. This situated sugarcoating performed by educators may be a key mechanism that links educational policies with student motivation for pursuing tasks educators may not perceive to be valuable for students, like IBCs.