REINHARD PEKRUN

Reinhard Pekrun is Professor of Psychology at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney. His research areas include achievement emotion and motivation, personality development, and psychological assessment and evaluation. Pekrun pioneered research on emotions in achievement settings and originated the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions. He has published more than 350 books, articles, and chapters, and is listed among the top twenty currently most highly cited researchers in the social sciences. Pekrun is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Academy of Education. He served as President of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society and Vice-President for Research at the University of Munich. Pekrun received the 2015 John G. Diefenbaker Award from the Canada Council which acknowledges outstanding research accomplishments across fields in the humanities and social sciences. He is also the recipient of the Sylvia Scribner Award 2017 (American Educational Research Association), the EARLI Oeuvre Award 2017 (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction), and the Lifetime Achievement Award 2018 of the German Psychological Society.

EMMA BRADSHAW

Dr. Emma Bradshaw is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney. She is a Self-Determination Theory (SDT) researcher, specialising in personal goals, autonomy, and meta-analysis, and uses a variety of cutting-edge statistical methods including genetic algorithms, network representation, network analysis, and multi-level meta-analytic structural equation modelling. She completed her PhD in 2019. Her doctoral thesis examined how patterns of intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations (derived using latent profile analysis) relate to various indices of optimal functioning. Since then, much of her work has focussed on the complexities of people’s aspirations and their impact on optimal functioning. Currently, Dr. Bradshaw is expanding her research program, diving more deeply into various aspects of SDT including experiences of late-life, autonomy, and human rights.

RICHARD RYAN

Richard Ryan, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University, a Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Ewha Womans University, a Professor Emeritus in Psychology at the University of Rochester, and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London.

Ryan is a clinical psychologist and co-developer of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), one of leading theories of human motivation. With over 500 scientific papers and books in the areas of human motivation, personality, and psychological well-being, Ryan is among the ’World’s Top 25 Scientists’ and the most cited and influential researcher in psychology and social sciences today. Reflective of Ryan’s influence internationally, he has been recognized as one of the eminent psychologists of the modern era, and has been acknowledged by The Australian as one of Australia’s top researchers listing him on the Lifetime Achievers Leaderboard.

Ryan has lectured in more than 100 universities worldwide, and consulted with numerous organizations, schools, clinics, and health-care initiatives. Recipient of distinguished career awards from multiple societies for his contributions to the field on motivation, personal meaning, and self and identity, Ryan is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, and an Honorary Member of the German Psychological Society (DGP). He has also been a James McKeen Cattell and Leverhulme Fellow, and a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the University of Bath, UK, and the Max Planck Institute, Berlin.

JOHN HATTIE

Professor John Hattie is a researcher in education. His research interests include performance indicators, models of measurement and evaluation of teaching and learning. John Hattie became known to a wider public with his two books Visible Learning and Visible Learning for teachers. Visible Learning is a synthesis of more than 800 meta-studies covering more than 80 million students.  According to John Hattie Visible Learning is the result of 15 years of research about what works best for learning in schools. TES once called him “possibly the world’s most influential education academic”.

John Hattie has been Director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, since March 2011. Before, he was Project Director of asTTle and Professor of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada.

JOHNMARSHALL REEVE

Johnmarshall Reeve is a Professor in the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University (since February 2019). Before ACU, Reeve was a professor in both South Korea (Korea University) and the United States (University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). He received his PhD from Texas Christian University (1986) and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Rochester (1990-1992).

Professor Reeve’s research interests center on the empirical study of all aspects of human motivation and emotion with emphases on teachers’ motivating styles, students’ engagement, self-determination theory based anti-bullying programs, and the neuroscience of intrinsic motivation. In his work on autonomy-supportive teaching, he has visited 14 countries to deliver a teacher-focused workshop to help teachers develop a more autonomy-supportive motivating style. For this work, he received (a) the Thomas N. Urban Research Award for the enhancement of educational practice from the FINE Foundation (2005), (b) the Research Excellence Award from Korea University (2016, 2017), and (c) the Excellence in Research Award from the NASPSPA (2017, 2024).

He has published 94 articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Educational Psychology, authored 33 book chapters and 4 books, including Supporting students’ motivation and Understanding Motivation and Emotion (8e). Prof. Reeve served as past Editor-in-Chief of the journal Motivation and Emotion, and he currently serves on the editorial boards of five journals.

JOHN WANG

Professor John Wang is the inaugural E. W. Barker Chair Professor in the Physical Education and Sport Science (PESS) Academic Group. He graduated from Loughborough University (UK) with a Ph.D. in Sport and Exercise Psychology, supported by an Overseas Graduate Scholarship from National Institute of Education (NIE) and an Overseas Research Students Award from Loughborough University. Professor John Wang is a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He is registered with the Health Professions Council of the UK as a Sport and Exercise Psychologist. Professor John Wang was the former Dean of the Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning, Head of the Physical Education and Sports Science Academic Group, Programme Director of the Sport Science and Management Degree, and Associate Dean for Research Management and Programmes at the Office of Education Research.  He was also a former President of the Singapore Physical Education Association from 2012 to 2016.

Professor John Wang has been involved in more than 50 research projects with a total grant amount of more than $6 million Singapore dollars. His research has resulted in many international and national collaborations, and a highly productive publication record with more than 200 refereed journal articles, books, and book chapters, in high-impact peer-reviewed journals in Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, Educational Psychology, Health Psychology, Outdoor Education, and Physical Education. He has presented more than 100 conference paper presentations and made various keynote and invited speeches at international conferences. His works have been widely cited internationally and his research has also impacted policy changes and practices in education and physical education in Singapore. His research expertise is on sport ability beliefs, achievement goals, intrinsic motivation, emotion, and self-concept. Many of his published papers are on motivation and emotion in the contexts of physical activity, and sport and exercise. He has also published papers on education, outdoor education, project work, internet gaming and national education.  As part of his work on motivation, Professor John Wang leads a group of staff from NIE at the Motivation in Educational Research Lab (MERL).

MIMI BONG

Mimi Bong is a Professor of Educational Psychology and a Graduate Program Chair in the Department of Education as well as the Director of bMRI (Brain and Motivation Research Institute; bmri.korea.ac.kr) and the BrainKorea 21 Project on Affect, Application, and AI-Solutions for Future Education at Korea University. Before joining Korea University, Bong taught at the University of South Carolina and Ewha Womans University. She received her MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her PhD from the University of Southern California.

Bong’s scholarship focuses on student motivation and learning within classroom settings. Her early work contributed to establishing the conceptual and empirical distinctiveness of self-concept and self-efficacy and highlighting the domain-specificity of various motivation constructs including self-efficacy, achievement goal orientations, and value perceptions. Bong was recognized as one of the most productive educational psychologists from 1997 through 2001 and received the 2006 Richard E. Snow Award for Early Contributions in Educational Psychology from the American Psychological Association. She was also noted as one of the top-producing female educational psychologists from 2009 through 2016.

Bong was drawn to the field of motivation by her observation of Korean students studying for misguided reasons and grappling with unwarranted lack of confidence and anxiety. Although her early research largely delved into conceptual issues, her ultimate goal has consistently been to assist real students in real classrooms. From 2017 and onwards, Bong has thus started implementing motivation interventions for elementary school children, targeting the mindset of both young children and their parents and enhancing children’s confidence and appreciation for learning.

Bong has published over 94 articles in peer-reviewed international and domestic journals and 21 book chapters. She also co-edited “Motivation Science: Controversies and Insights,” published by Oxford University Press, with Johnmarshall Reeve and Sung-il Kim. She served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Education (2022-2024) and the Associate Editor of the American Educational Research Journal (2014-2015). She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the American Psychological Association’s Division 15. Bong is the President of the Korean Educational Psychology Association.