Students enter secondary classrooms armed with attributions for their own successes or failures, informed by experiences in and out of school, but it is unclear to what degree these attributions affect achievement. Additionally, while the influence teacher expectations can have on student achievement is well documented, students' perceptions of…

Seventy-five students projected their feelings in eight typical achievement situations. Each student described affective responses to one situation, varying in achievement outcome, task importance, and effort. The 2 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance for affective component scores indicated that perceptions of success/failure accounted for most of the…

A study of 104 students (ages 16 to 22) with mental retardation (n=32), learning disabilities (n=34), or no disabilities (n=38) examined variables that contribute to perceptions of self-determination and increased student motivation. The students with disabilities were found to have more of an external locus of control orientation. (CR)

Causal attributions for success and failure in science, mathematics, and English were studied with intellectually gifted secondary school students (n=30) and their nongifted siblings (n=32). For success in science, siblings had significantly higher effort and strategy attribution scores, and lower task easiness attribution scores than did gifted…

To discover what part parent impartiality might play in creating a climate in which each individual child can prosper, 198 college students from a large Midwestern urban university were questioned about their perceptions of their parents' behavior during the time that they were growing up. The first section of the survey consisted of 50 questions…