Claims of the importance of having positive perceptions and expectations of students with learning disabilities (LD) have been repeatedly made over recent years. This article aims to raise awareness of the importance of attributional beliefs in relation to the educational outcomes of students with LD in Australia and China. Australian and Chinese…

The paper reviews research on the effects of motivation on performance of learning disabled children and presents a treatment approach (attribution retraining) designed to help children link their difficulties to factors under their own control. (CL)

This study used qualitative methodology to investigate the self-efficacy beliefs of early adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). We conducted a series of focus group interviews with 28 Grade 8 and 9 students with LD and individual interviews with 7 specialist LD teachers. Content analyses of the student and teacher data resulted in 2 a…

Learning-disabled (N=48) and nonlearning-disabled (N=48) fourth- and fifth-grade boys were given a task and told they had either succeeded or failed. Results indicated that learning-disabled subjects showed greater persistence, attributed outcomes to external factors, and did not exhibit lower performance expectations nor show greater expectancy…

The study involving 28 educationally handicapped (EH) and 25 learning disabled LD/EH children (mean ages 13 and 12 years) included among its results that EH Ss took significantly more personal responsibility for academic failure than did LD/EH Ss; EH Ss attributed success to ability but failure to both lack of ability and lack of effort.…

Ninety-seven elementary general education teachers rated their responses to the test failures of hypothetical boys with and without learning disabilities. In most cases, greater reward, less punishment, less anger, more pity, and higher expectations of future failure followed the negative outcomes of the boys with learning disabilities compared to…