As this paper demonstrates, studying abortive educational reforms reveals a great deal about the complex political dynamics involved in making (and unmaking) key policy decisions. Using case studies of France and West Germany, the paper argues that the state in advanced industrial countries tends to maximize the political gains derived from…

This study targeted students with a history of academic failure to investigate the relationships among reported self-regulated learning strategies, attributional patterns, academic performance expectancies, and academic performance. Ninety-seven community college students, over 70% of whom were minority group members, completed self-report…

An examination of the dynamics of academic failure is presented in this monograph in the form of an annotated bibliography of current literature. The writings cited offer a cross-section of research on what factors affect students' choices of adaptive or maladaptive behavior patterns in the classroom and in relation to their peers. Section one of…

Psychological researchers continue to debate the relative contribution of ability and effort to feelings of self-worth. To investigate student preferences for ability or effort and their relationship to self-worth, and to assess the relative contribution of ability and effort to affective experience, two separate studies were undertaken. In the…

The reluctance of depressed people to try hard may result not from their low expectancy for success, as Learned Helplessness Theory suggests, but rather from egotistic motivation to preserve whatever self-esteem they still have. Two studies were conducted using a paradigm which permitted a direct comparison of Learned Helplessness Theory and…

College students were asked to recall experiences of success and of failure from their own lives, and to indicate what they believed to be the reasons for success or failure. Results indicated that (1) women were more likely than men to attribute success to effort; (2) men attributed success to luck more often than women; (3) women had more pride…

Researchers in attribution theory have used two styles in wording attributional questions. The informational style asks subjects the extent to which they possess ability, effort and luck relative to a task, and task difficulty. The causal style asks subjects the extent to which various factors influenced or caused the outcome. A study was…

This study discusses a plan designed for a ten-year-old emotionally disturbed boy which included positive feedback for academic achievement and positive social emotional feedback from peers. The results indicated that in the changed class classroom environment, the frequency of maladaptive behaviors decreased. (Author/PC)

This paper compares the literary success of two novels published in 1955: "The Dollmaker," by Harriette Arnow, and "A Fable," by William Faulkner. Reviews of each book reflect that Arnow's book was judged excellent, while Faulkner's book was considered rough and unpolished. In spite of the reviews, Faulkner received the…

Causal attributions were obtained from male and female subjects of two racial groups, black and white, following achievement performance in a "natural" setting. Although women expected lower grades than men, no significant differences in attributional ratings as function of gender were observed, nor were any race by gender interactions seen in the…

This paper briefly reviews how New York City has developed its bureaucratic school structures, the pathologies that have developed within them, and some remedies that can help to change them into structures that will improve city schools. Some historians claimed that reformers purposely created bureaucratic school systems to provide a docile pool…

A study of vocational guidance in a Federal German agency shows discrepancies between performance and the formally legislated job description; welfare bureaucrats reduce formally stated role schemes in order to cope. The relational, normative, and functional aspects of reduction are discussed, and mechanisms of cognitive reconciliation of roles…

The purpose of this study was to expand the previous limited locus of control focus of gender differences cross-nationally by shifting to an attributional model for both successes and failures in both achievement and affiliation domains in order to test the hypothesis that women differ from men in their attributional patterns for achievement and…

Research has reported relationships between fear of success and fear of failure and between fear of success and various sex-role identity factors. These relationships were examined for undergraduates (N=154) using the Fear of Success Scale (FOSS) to measure fear of success, the Debilitating Anxiety Scale (DAS) to measure fear of failure, and the…

Much theoretical interest has been focused on the role that causal attributions play in the development of mood disorders. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of outcomes and performance attributions upon mood. In the first experiment subjects performed different tasks which naturally gave rise to internal or external…