Causal attributions for school-related problems: Teacher perceptions and teacher feedback.

Conducted 2 studies with a total of 54 teachers to examine classroom teachers' attributions for severe school problems. In both studies, teachers who had referred a student for psychological services were asked to assign causality for the referral problem. In Exp II, teacher praise and criticism of referred students were examined as functions of causal attributions. Both studies show that teachers held student factors more responsible for classroom problems than teacher factors and that teachers' attributions varied somewhat for learning vs behavior problems. Exp II indicated that problem students perceived as lacking motivation were criticized more often by their teachers. Relationship of the results to attribution theory and teacher attribution research is discussed, and further research conducted in naturalistic settings is recommended. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A question of standards: Attributions of blame and credit for classroom acts.

We examined differences between blame and credit judgments among 247 students and 13 teachers from 7 first- and 6 fifth-grade classrooms. Study 1 indicated that even young children used information about excuses and justifications in assigning blame but not in determining credit. The gap between grades for assignment of credit was most striking for norms involving specific classroom roles. At both grade levels, norms of duty differed from norms of aspiration; for the latter, more credit was assigned for good outcomes than was blame for bad outcomes. Study 2 analyzed teachers' attributions and examined links between teachers' and pupils' judgments. Children's blame attributions were more highly correlated with those of teachers than were credit attributions. Teachers who provided less negative procedural feedback (NPF) had pupils whose blame judgments were more highly correlated with their own. However, within categories of teachers (grade levels by high-low NPF), individual teachers' and pupils' idiosyncratic judgments were not associated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's autonomy and perceived control in learning: A model of motivation and achievement in Taiwan.

A model of motivation and achievement was tested with data from 50 teachers and 806 Grade 4-6 students in Taiwan. Autonomy as a construct was shown to have ecological validity in Chinese children. The proposed model fit the data well, showing that maternal involvement and autonomy support, as well as teachers' autonomy support, are important for children's autonomy and perceived control. Without the mediation of perceived control, autonomy had a small negative effect on performance; controlling for perceived control, external motivation orientation was a positive predictor for Chinese children's effort and performance. The teachers' reported motivating style, as construed in Western research, does not correspond with Chinese children's perceptions of their teachers nor does it have any relationship with their motivation measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' beliefs about former Head Start and non-Head Start first-grade children's motivation, performance, and future educational prospects.

The authors examined 33 first grade teachers' beliefs about their pupils' ability, effort, and interest in different academic tasks, making friends, and sports; how much education teachers thought children could and actually would achieve; and their expectations for children's next year's grades. Eighty-three of the children were former Head Start participants, and 55 were not. Teachers' beliefs and expected grades for the children were least positive in the academic areas. Teachers thought the children were capable of achieving a significantly higher level of education than they thought children actually would achieve. Teachers' beliefs about the former Head Start and non-Head Start children were similar, but teachers' beliefs did significantly differ by the children's ethnicity. Teachers' beliefs predicted children's test performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal attributions of learning-disabled children: Developmental patterns and relation to academic progress.

The relation of school-identified learning-disabled (LD) children's achievement attributions to their academic progress and an examination of developmental patterns of their attributional styles were investigated in these longitudinal studies. Attributions were measured with two scales on which children attributed hypothetical academic failure situations to causes that varied on dimensions of locus, stability, and controllability. Academic progress was indexed by changes in achievement test scores over a 2-year span and by teachers' ratings of students' success and classroom behavior. In accordance with Weiner's theory of achievement motivation, LD children who attributed failures to variant, controllable causes made the greatest achievement gains and were rated by teachers as exhibiting the most appropriate classroom behavior. Comparison of developmental patterns of attributions between LD and nondisabled children did not support the hypothesis that LD children enter a self-perpetuating failure cycle; nor were previously reported findings of sex differences within the LD group replicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

National assessment of early elementary teachers perceived self-efficacy for teaching tobacco prevention based on the CDC guidelines

A national random sample of 505 early elementary school teachers completed a 47-item survey to determine their perceived self-efficacy for teaching tobacco prevention education based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for grades K-3, their training status on tobacco prevention, and their level of teaching about tobacco prevention. Results indicated most of the teachers were female, White, held a bachelor's or master's degree, never smoked, and had not received formal tobacco prevention training. The teachers' scores were high for efficacy expectations, and for outcome expectations. Conversely, for outcome value, teachers ranked tobacco prevention fifth out of six health topics, as the most important health topic to teach elementary students. Also, teachers trained in four tobacco areas or more had statistically significantly higher scores for efficacy expectations than those trained in three or fewer areas. Statistically significant positive associations were also found between years of teaching tobacco prevention and efficacy and outcome expectation scores, and between the amount of time that tobacco prevention was taught during the past school year and outcome value.     

Sex differences in learned helplessness: II. The contingencies of evaluative feedback in the classroom and III. An experimental analysis.

Girls show greater evidence than boys of learned helplessness in achievement situations with adult (but not peer) evaluators: They attribute their failures to lack of ability rather than motivation and thus show impaired performance under failure. Two studies are reported linking sex differences in attributions to adults' use of evaluative feedback. Study 1, with 52 4th graders and 27 5th graders, revealed that both the contingencies of feedback in classrooms and the attributions made by teachers were ones that would render negative evaluation more indicative of ability for girls than boys. For example, negative evaluation of girls' performance referred almost exclusively to intellectual inadequacies, whereas 45% of boys' work-related criticism referred to nonintellectual aspects. Moreover, teachers attributed the boys' failures to lack of motivation significantly more than they did the girls' failures. In Study 2, with 60 5th graders, teacher–boy and teacher–girl contingencies of work-related criticism observed in classrooms were programmed in an experimental situation. Both boys and girls receiving the teacher–girl contingency were more likely to view subsequent failure feedback from that evaluator as indicative of their ability. Implications for developmental theories and for development are addressed. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in predicting final examination grades: The influence of past performance, attributions, and achievement motivation.

43 male and 41 female undergraduates reported their high school and last semester GPAs, their 1st and 2nd midterm grades, and their final exam predictions. Ss also rated the influence that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck had on their performances and completed Mehrabian's achievement motivation scale. Regression analyses provided support for the attribution model of achievement expectations. All Ss used ability to explain their successes; however, males attributed failures to lack of effort while females often used luck to explain their performances. Although both sexes earned equal midterm scores and predicted similar final grades, males based their predictions solely on the 2 midterms. Females' predictions were significantly affected by both midterm performance and achievement motivation. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomous motivation for teaching: How self-determined teaching may lead to self-determined learning.

This study examined teachers' experience of autonomous motivation for teaching and its correlates in teachers and students. It was hypothesized that teachers would perceive various motivations posited by E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan's (2000) self-determination theory as falling along a continuum of autonomous motivation for teaching. Autonomous motivation for teaching was predicted to be associated positively with teachers' sense of personal accomplishment and negatively with emotional exhaustion. Most important, teachers' self-reported autonomous motivation for teaching was expected to promote students' self-reported autonomous motivation for learning by enhancing teachers' autonomy-supportive behavior, as indicated by students' reports. Results from a sample of 132 Israeli teachers and their 1,255 students were consistent with the hypotheses. Discussion focuses on the importance of the experience of autonomous motivation for teaching for teachers and students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of teacher judgments of pupil achievement levels.

Analyzed the accuracy of 12 teachers' judgments of pupil achievement levels. Ss were asked to provide for each of their 322 3rd–8th grade pupils an estimate of achievement test performance, a rating of basic intellectual ability, and a rating of motivation to do school work. Pupils were administered the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test and the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test. Analyses revealed a high level of accuracy for the achievement judgments when compared to test scores. There was no evidence that pupil gender functioned as a biasing variable in the judgments, but there were indications that the pupil ability variable was a source of bias for some Ss, who overestimated the performance of high-ability pupils and underestimated the performance of low-ability pupils. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aptitude test scores, past performance, and causal attributions about the poorly performing student.

Studied the impact of aptitude test scores and past performance information on causal attributions about a student's poor present performance. 180 graduate students were given questionnaires containing either past performance information alone or past performance information and aptitude scores of a hypothetical student. Responses of 69 students were used in the analysis. Results show that the presence of low aptitude scores led to greater ability attributions regardless of past performance while not affecting effort attributions. The presence of high aptitude scores led to greater effort attributions given poor past performance and a tendency to lesser effort attributions given successful past performance while not affecting ability attributions. Ability attributions also were found to be negatively related to expectancies about the student's future success. Implications of these results for students and educators are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teacher expectations: II. Construction and reflection of student achievement.

Tested hypotheses regarding self-fulfilling prophecies, perceptual biases, and accuracy using longitudinal data relating 98 6th-grade math teachers' expectations to 1,731 students' performance. Consistent with the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis, teacher expectations predicted changes in student achievement beyond effects accounted for by previous achievement and motivation. Consistent with the perceptual bias hypothesis, teacher expectations predicted their own evaluations of students' performance more strongly than they predicted standardized test scores. Consistent with the accuracy hypothesis, path coefficients relating teacher expectations to standardized achievement tests were about 80% lower than zero-order correlations, and the path coefficients relating teacher expectations to students' grades were 45% to 65% lower than the zero-order correlations. These results support a weak constructivist perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic expectations, attributed responsibility, and teachers' reinforcement behavior: A comment on Cooper and Baron, with some additional data.

Criticizes a study by H. M. Cooper and R. M. Baron (see record 1978-08780-001) in which they conclude that teachers' performance expectations were more potent predictors of their reinforcement behavior in class than were their attributions of responsibility. It is argued that this conclusion is questionable because of some methodological flaws in the study. Evidence that shows rather strong associations between teachers' attributions of responsibility and their reinforcement behavior is presented. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sequential attributional feedback and children's achievement behaviors.

Determined how the sequence of ability and effort attributional feedback influenced task motivation, attributions for success, self-efficacy, and skillful performance in 80 elementary school Ss (aged 8 yrs 2 mo to 10 yrs 5 mo) in 2 experiments. In Exp I, 40 Ss lacking subtraction skills received training and problem-solved over 4 sessions. During the problem solving, Group 1 (ability-ability) periodically received ability feedback; Group 2 (effort-effort) received little effort feedback; Group 3 (ability-effort) was given ability feedback during the 1st 2 sessions and effort feedback during the last 2; Group 4 (effort-ability) had this sequence reversed. In Exp II, 40 Ss (chosen with the same criteria as in Exp I) followed the same procedures except they were asked about their perceptions of success or failure following training. Results for both experiments show that Ss in Groups 1 and 3 developed higher ability attributions, self-efficacy, and subtraction skills compared with Ss in Groups 2 and 4. The sequence of attributional feedback did not differentially affect motivation, effort attributions, or perceptions of training successes. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effectiveness and relative importance of choice in the classroom.

This investigation examined the effects of providing choices among homework assignments on motivation and subsequent academic performance. Students were randomly assigned within classrooms either to receive a choice of homework options or to be assigned an option for all homework in one instructional unit. Conditions were reversed for a second instructional unit. Results revealed that when students received a choice of homework they reported higher intrinsic motivation to do homework, felt more competent regarding the homework, and performed better on the unit test compared with when they did not have a choice. In addition, a trend suggested that having choices enhanced homework completion rates compared with when no choices were given. In a second analysis involving the same students, the importance of perceived provision of choice was examined in the context of student perceptions of their teachers' support for autonomy more broadly defined. Survey data showed that the relationship between perceptions of receiving autonomy support from teachers and intrinsic motivation for schoolwork could be fully accounted for by students' perceptions of receiving choices from their teachers. The limitations and implications of the study for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-serving bias in the classroom: Who shows it? Who knows it?

Two studies were conducted to explore student and teacher attributions for success and failure. In the first study, college students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 roles (student, teacher, or observer). The teacher constructed a written lesson for the student to study. Both teachers and students made self-serving attributions taking credit for success, but not for failure. Although their attributions differed, participants in each role were aware of how participants in the other roles would make their attributions. A second study surveyed college teachers, students, and staff concerning actual previous high and low grades. The results replicated those of the first study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigating preservice teachers' professional growth in self-regulated learning environments.

Educational reforms have suggested that the ability to self-regulate learning is essential for teachers' professional growth during their entire career as well as for their ability to promote these processes among students. This study observed teachers' professional growth along 3 dimensions: self-regulated learning (SRL) in pedagogical context, pedagogical knowledge, and perceptions of teaching and learning. The authors examined 194 preservice teachers' professional growth in 4 learning environments: e-learning (EL) and face-to-face (F2F) learning, either supported by SRL (EL + SRL; F2F + SRL) or unsupported by SRL (EL; F2F). SRL support was based on the IMPROVE metacognitive self-questioning method (B. Kramarski & Z. R. Mevarech, 2003). Mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that preservice teachers in both supported SRL conditions outperformed their unsupported peers on all professional growth measures. Moreover, EL + SRL teachers exhibited the highest SRL ability (cognition, metacognition, motivation), pedagogical knowledge (designing a learning unit), and student-centered learning perceptions (self-construction of knowledge). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects of different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest, and performance.

A total of 200 fifth- and sixth-grade students with high or low school achievement were given interesting divergent thinking tasks in each of three sessions. Individual comments, numerical grades, standardized praise, or no feedback were received after Sessions 1 and 2. Results confirmed that at Session 3 (posttest), interest, performance, and attributions of effort, outcome, and the impact of evaluation to task-involved causes were highest at both levels of achievement after receipt of comments. Ego-involved attributions were highest after receipt of grades and praise. These findings support the conceptualization of the feedback conditions as task involving (comments), ego involving (grades and praise), or neither (no feedback). The similar impact of grades and praise would not be predicted by cognitive evaluation theory. I discuss the importance of distinguishing between task- and ego-involved orientations in the study of continuing motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Outcome and attributional disagreements between students and their teachers.

Teachers' and students' outcome interpretations, attributions for the outcome, expectancies of future exam outcome, and perceptions concerning instrumental actions were compared after a math exam. One third of the students disagreed with their teacher about whether the exam outcome was a success or a failure; teachers evaluated the outcomes more positively than did students. When the students and the teachers agreed on the outcome interpretation, their mean attributional ratings did not apparently differ. However, ratings of teacher–student dyads revealed considerable attributional differences. After perceived failure, the dyadic attributional disagreements were related to disagreements concerning the instrumental actions needed for future success. Also, given failure, the more discrepant the dyad members' views of the stability of the attributions were, the more discrepant were their future expectations. Disagreements between students and teachers concerning outcome evaluation, causal perception, and future expectancy are discussed in terms of students' and teachers' biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational and performance deficits in interpersonal settings: The effect of attributional style.

Tested an attributional model of motivation and performance following failure. 63 college students were preselected on the basis of their attributional styles for interpersonal failures, as measured by the Attributional Style Assessment Test. Ss in the 2 preselected groups (character-style vs behavioral-style attributors) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental manipulations of attributions for failure at an interpersonal persuasion task: (a) no manipulation, (b) ability/trait manipulation (which parallels the character-style), or (c) strategy/effort manipulation (which parallels the behavior style). Subsequently, Ss engaged in a blood drive task over the telephone, trying to persuade other students to donate blood. Success expectancies, motivation, and actual performance were assessed. As predicted, Ss who made strategy-/effort-type attributions, whether by experimental manipulation or by preselection, expected more success, expected more improvement with practice, displayed higher levels of motivation, and performed better at the task than did Ss who made ability-/trait-type attributions. Implications for the treatment of such clinical symptoms as loneliness and depression are discussed. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)