The present study investigated the causes to which parents attribute their children's academic successes and failures during children's transition from preschool to primary school. It followed 182 mothers and 167 fathers of 207 children. The parents completed a questionnaire concerning their causal attributions, level of education, and parenting…

Students talk with teachers about disappointing grades for different reasons, and the way students frame such interactions has consequences for how those interactions are likely to unfold. To explore students' primary goals in such interactions, 234 undergraduates reported on a recent conversation with an instructor about a lower-than-desired…

A visit to most any technology education laboratory or classroom will reveal that computers, software, and multimedia software are rapidly becoming a mainstay in learning about technology and technological literacy. Almost all technology labs have at least several computers dedicated to specialized software or hardware such as Computer-aided…

Research indicates that young children, unlike adults, have a generalized tendency to view not only artifacts but also living and nonliving natural phenomena as existing for a purpose. To further understand this tendency's origin, the authors explored parents' propensity to invoke teleological explanation during explanatory conversations with…

Young children's failures in reasoning about beliefs and desires, and especially about false beliefs, have been much studied. However, there are few accounts of successful belief-desire reasoning in older children or adults. An exception to this is a model in which belief attribution is treated as a process wherein an inhibitory system selects the…

Presents a social-cognitive model outlining the role of parental attributions for child behavior in parent?child interactions. Examples of studies providing evidence for the basic model are presented, with particular reference to applications of the model in families of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and/or…

We investigated whether attribution retraining instruction (ARI) embedded in mathematics lessons in a second-grade classroom could help students (a) attribute their successes and failures to effort or lack of effort, (b) not attribute their successes and failures to uncontrollable factors, and (c) increase their mathematics scores. One…

Within the study of human sexuality, researchers have undergone a cognitive shift toward the use of self-report measures to identify motivations for sexual behaviors. This article creates an argument for a re-orientation to including implicit or "drive" motivations within the field in order to better understand the forces that likely determine…

This study addresses the screening decisions for a national random sample of high school principals as viewed from the attraction-similarity theory of interpersonal perceptions. Independent variables are the sex of principals, sex of applicants, and the type of focal positions sought by hypothetical job applicants (teacher or counselor). Dependent…

This qualitative research study explored the experiences of students who had attended a co operative (co-op) education program, with a focus on what makes the experience meaningful to them. Utilizing a basic interpretive research design, students who graduated from a co-op program were interviewed using an open-ended interview protocol. Both male…

The present study investigated the extent to which parents' causal attributions predict the accuracy of, and bias in, their children's self-concept of maths ability. Participants were 207 children and their 182 mothers and 167 fathers, who were assessed during the children's first and second primary school years. The results showed that the more…

Research has shown significant declines in gateway drug use among participants in a school/community substance abuse prevention intervention in a midwestern, suburban school district (Lohrmann, Alter, Greene, & Younoszai, 2005). Though still at or below national levels, student marijuana use was not impacted as positively. The current study…

Attribution theory provides a framework for examining personal and interpersonal motivation for collaborative projects. Undergraduates were asked to read vignettes concerning student dyads engaged in collaborative projects. The vignettes systematically varied on outcome of the project, student self-ability, student self-effort, partner ability,…

Drawing on social schema theory (Fiske & Taylor, 1991) and social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), this study examined the impact on teachers' reactions to children's aggression of three variables, two of which were related to the aggressors and one was related to the teachers. Experienced female elementary school teachers (N=90) each read…

The purpose of this paper was to understand how Turkish mothers make meaning of the disability of their children with Mental Retardation (MR). Thirteen Turkish mothers who had at least one child with MR were the participants of the study. A qualitative interpretive framework was used for collecting and analyzing the data. The data were gathered…