Students' thinking about the relation between effort and ability can influence their motivation, affect, and academic achievement. Students sometimes think of effort as inversely related to ability (such that people with low ability must work harder than people with high ability) and other times think of effort as positively related to ability…

Investigates children's development of causal explanations of success and failure. Compares two measures of causal attribution to show that the use of unipolar scales best depicts differences in causal factors used by children. Explores two hypotheses about the impact of normative context on the development of causal differentiation. (DSK)

Second and third graders' competence to integrate knowledge of their ability and effort, as they would function in the child's success on a reading task, was examined in terms of the constraints of the stages of the Genevan operativity model. (Author/PN)

This document is a literature review discussing research on locus of control, particularly as it relates to early childhood education. Some measures of children's sense of locus of control are discussed, including the Optimism-Pessimism Test Instrument and the Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale. A discussion of how an educator's sense of…

This study examines dispositional and situational approaches to attribution research, individual differences in self-attribution, and the relationship between self-attributions and dimensions of self-concept. Results of a study of 248 fifth graders in Sydney, Australia, are discussed. (BS)

Examines explanations used by children (ages five-14) to explain academic success and failure; frequency of their use; and developmental variations in types of explanations used. It was found that patterns of attribution categories vary by age, and that the attribution process involves a complex interaction of subjective and objective reality.…

The concept of self-regulation--the process whereby students activate and sustain behaviors and cognitive paths which are systematically oriented toward attainment of learning goals--is increasing in importance among educators. Self-regulation includes activities such as attending to instruction; organizing, coding, and rehearsing information;…