Meaningful and impactful learning experiences are rife with failure. And yet, students struggle with framing, tolerating and attributing failure in a positive manner within the post-secondary learning context. This paper explores whether using design thinking as a pedagogical approach might help students learn to tolerate, reframe and attribute…

Navigating scientific challenges, persevering through difficulties, and coping with failure are considered hallmarks of a successful scientist. However, relatively few studies investigate how undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students develop these skills and dispositions or how instructors can facilitate this…

This study was conducted to track conceptions of learning among pre-service teachers and to verify whether they can be grouped in profiles. A sample of 232 pre-service teachers took part in this research. A self-report instrument was administered to discover their conceptions of learning. A factorial analysis allowed us to build a model of eight…

This study aims to investigate Turkish EFL learners' attributions for success and failure in speaking English, and to find out whether gender and department variables exert any impact on their attributions. The attributions were analyzed and compared in terms of the four dimensions: locus of causality, external control, stability and personal…

Attribution theory deals with the question of how individuals make judgments and seek to explain how they consider the causes of their behaviours and those of others. Attributions have the potential to affect beliefs, emotions and behaviour. Therefore, attribution theory has significantly contributed to the studies on motivation. This study…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the causes attributed by undergraduate music students to situations of failure and success in public music performance. Attributional Theory has been used in this research as the theoretical framework to understand how situations of success and failure are interpreted by the person of the activity.…

This study investigated the effect of writing process in Google Docs environment on Iranian EFL learners' writing performance. It also examined students' perceptions towards the effects of Google Docs and their perceived causes of success or failure in writing performance. In this regard, 48 EFL students were chosen based on their IELTs writing…

This article reports findings from a 3-year qualitative study exploring the experiences of African American preservice teachers as they prepared for the Praxis "basic skills" teacher-licensure exam, a gatekeeper to many teacher-education programs. Using the construct of self-efficacy, results illustrate how students assess their Praxis…

This article reviews research on motivation in the academic domain of writing situated within a social cognitive perspective. First we summarize major findings related to 4 theorized components of human motivation--self-efficacy beliefs or perceived competence, mastery and performance goal orientations, task interest and value, and attributions…