If teachers can be trained to attribute poor student performance to such things as insufficient instruction, low expenditure of effort, or poor strategy rather than students' lack of ability, they will modify instruction or provide a new learning strategy. For this to happen, teachers must first display attributional thinking about their own life events which will enhance a sense of control and self-esteem by internalizing positive events and externalizing negative events. An inservice workshop to enhance personal styles of attribution association with greater student motivation to perform academic tasks was held. Twenty-six teachers who completed a program consisting of lecture, modeling, role-playing, and self-analysis displayed significantly different Attribution Style Questionnaire scores from the 28 comparison teachers; women changed significantly more than men. Findings suggest that an educational intervention can modify attributional thinking of teachers to enhance their personal sense of control. The workshop approach was effective in modifying teachers' causal thinking about themselves and changed their thinking about students' behavior in ways that did not diminish their own sense of self-efficacy. (LL)