Over the past fifty years, extensive research has examined the influence of causal attributions on cognitions, emotions, and behaviours in educational contexts. However, these studies often relied on inferences about dimensional properties of attributions, and not on students' perceptions of them. This study innovates by directly assessing these…

The present study examined the efficacy of autonomy-supportive teaching during elementary school physical education (PE) in influencing pupils' enjoyment, fear of failure, boredom and effort. A sample of 54 pupils attending fifth and sixth grades comprised the control group (typical instruction; n = 27) and the experimental group…

The current investigation was designed to identify emotion states students experience during mathematics activities, and in particular to distinguish emotions contingent on experiences of success and experiences of failure. Students' task-related emotional responses were recorded following experiences of success and failure while working with an…

We investigated whether being poorly skilled in reading contributes to children's reported feelings of anger, distractibility, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, and social isolation. Data were analyzed from a longitudinal subsample of children (N = 3,308) participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort. Multilevel logistic…

This study examined gender differences in the interactions early adolescent students report having with significant others following academic failure and the consequences of these interactions for student worry. The 5th- through 8th-grade students (N = 297) reported on their general strategies for coping with academic failure, the nature of their…

People can learn as much from what they do not do right as what they do. This article describes such a failure. The author had gathered six students together for an interview concerning art and their lives--and things became so chaotic, he thought it was all a wash... until he went back and listened to the tape. Only then did he realize that what…

Relationships among attributions for success and failure and depression were investigated for 63 5th-grade students. Significant relationships were found among school-based attributions, as measured by global scale scores from the Student Academic Attribution Scale (SAAS) and the Student Social Attribution Scale (SSAS), general attributions as…