Student motivation, confidence, and perceived control are of key interest to sociology instructors seeking to develop pedagogical techniques that increase student engagement. However, attribution research suggests that strengthening these aspects of student learning can be challenging if students attribute academic outcomes to factors over which…

Attribution theory is concerned with why outcomes occur such as "Why did I fail the exam?" or "Why are they picking on me?" (Weiner, 1986, 2018; see Graham, 2020 for a review). Although this article focuses on achievement, attributions are relevant to the social as well as the achievement domain. Both questions concern failure…

This study on college student success examines factors students attribute toward improving their academic performance in college. Open coding, content analysis, and analytic induction methods were used to examine responses from 478 undergraduate students at an R-1 highly active, public research university in the southeastern region of the US. The…

As part of the research on motivation, causal attribution studies have an important role in predicting and improving academic performance since controllable and uncontrollable attributions have an effect on learners' future actions. Following this path, the present qualitative study investigates the attributions of students in an English Language…

The aim of this research is to point out the underlying reasons about the lack of motivation at academic activities concerning Attribution Theory. Attribution Theory trys to understand how the people answer "why" question and how they do casual explanations. This research is a qualitative based research. It used the phenomenological…

John Dewey knew that when students were actively involved in their learning, they were more motivated and achieved higher. Unfortunately, our practices often negatively affect motivation, such as when teachers emphasize competition, social comparison, normative grading criteria, public forms of evaluation, and ability self-assessment. Most…

This paper reports on a four-year research project examining the experiences of children with dyslexia in mainstream schools and reading schools/classes. The focus of this paper is on the socio-emotional effects of dyslexia on a group of children attending a reading school/class for a specific duration before returning to mainstream. The findings…

While college art instructors strive to respond to the current generation of students, educational psychologists stress the importance of teachers' focusing on students' cognitive-affective makeup in addition to conveying course content. Attribution theory--and more specifically, student perceptions of control over academic outcomes--can serve to…

In an effort to reduce failure and attrition rates to increase on-time program completion and graduation rates, many schools are adopting a policy of assigning minimum grades. While justifications supporting the policy are often mathematical in nature, some proponents also claim the practice works to keep students motivated, hopeful, confident and…

This article provides insight into how teachers can listen to students' stories about themselves and mathematics to understand the characteristics that students attribute to themselves. The article also explains how to use stories to inspire and motivate children in mathematics. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The influences of locus of control, awareness of control and metacognition on the use and transfer of a trained strategy were examined. Specifically, it was hypothesized that internal locus of control would be associated with more strategic performance, and that those children who were able to both accurately assess their performance with and…

This study examined the relative impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and personality variables on procrastination behavior of college students. A total of 96 undergraduates completed the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students, the Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale, the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, the Work…

The interrelationships among motivational variables drawn from locus of control (LOC) theory and attribution theory, combined with measures of school achievement were measures of school achievement were investigated. Motivational instruments were administered to intermediate grade students and achievement data were extracted from existing school…

The article offers suggestions for dealing with learning disabled children's apparent lack of achievement motivation, which may be a lack of belief that their actions affect academic and nonacademic achievement. Suggestions include establishing appropriate standards, focusing on effort rather than outcome, and promoting self-acceptance of credit…

This study was designed to validate subjects' classification of eleven attributions according to dimensions of locus, stability, controllability, predictability, and globality. Results indicated that subjects' dimensional assignment of five of Weiner's eight original attributions differed from Weiner's assignment. Differences existed in the…