Jacquelynne Sue Eccles

Educational psychologist Jacquelynne S. Eccles is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine and formerly the McKeachie/Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan, as well as Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Gender and Achievement Research Program at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Eccles has conducted research on a wide variety of topics including gender-role socialization, teacher expectancies, classroom influences on student motivation, and social development in the family and school context. She has made seminal contributions to the study of achievement-related decisions and development. Most notably, her expectancy-value theory of motivation and her concept of stage-environment have served as among the most dominant models of achievement during the school years, contributing to extensive research and reform efforts to improve the nature of secondary school transitions. Eccles also has been a major figure in the study of after-school activities, authoring a seminal National Research Council report that outlined the most effective ways for such activities to meet the developmental needs of adolescents.

Her service to her profession has been extensive, including serving as Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate at the National Science Foundation, and Chair of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways through Middle Childhood. She is past editor of the journal Developmental Psychology, Journal for Research on Adolescence, and formerly associate editor of Psychological Bulletin and Child Development, AERA Open, and American Psychologist. She is past president of Division 7 of APA, the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), and Division 35 of APA, and has served on the faculty at Smith College, the University of Colorado, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Irvine.