Attribution theory suggests that the existence of affirmative action programs may lead individuals to assume that a female or minority affirmative action appointee was hired for reasons other than legitimate qualifications for the job. This inference of incompetence could pose a tremendous barrier to competent women or minority individuals being…

Addressing two issues of Dweck and Leggett's (1988) social cognitive theory of personality, this short-term longitudinal field study investigated the relationship between implicit theories about the self and school anxiety among adolescents making the transition to junior high school. It was hypothesized that students who believed that their…

Data from a longitudinal sample of 14,721 White (7,193 male, 7,528 female) and 5,197 Black (2,400 male, 2,797 female) respondents tested first between ages 16 and 19 and in two follow-ups were explored in relation to Black-White, male-female differences in self-esteem and causal orientations. On general self-esteem scores, Blacks rated themselves…

The effect of collegiate experiences on students' reported personal development during the first two years of college were studied after controlling for individual, prematriculation differences. LISREL (LInear Structural RELationships) Analysis was employed to fit Tinto's theoretical framework to the variables and processes potentially involved in…

Following a traditional learned helplessness paradigm, subjects initially tried to terminate random bursts of noise using a button-pressing manipulandum and next tried to solve 20 serially-presented anagrams. The noise was broadcast at either a loud or soft intensity, and the subject's button-pressing was either successful (Escape condition) or…

This programmatic series of three studies compares, in British and Hungarian secondary schools, two contrasting conceptualizations of motivation and successively relates them to approaches to learning and studying and then to indices of self-concept and attributions of success and failure. The first conceptualization was developed in Hungary and…

Teacher's explanations for students' low achievement were reliably classified using the attributional coding system proposed by H. M. Cooper and T. L. Good (1983). Study subjects were 20 male and 24 female teachers enrolled in graduate classes at a midwestern university. All grade-level teaching assignments (primary school through…

A study explored the development of self-efficacy and outcome expectancy beliefs for reading and writing--examining specifically (1) the structure of the relationships both within reading and within writing, and the influences of writing beliefs on reading and reading beliefs on writing; and (2) the development of writing beliefs. Subjects were…

The study attempted to chart the differences in self-concept between academically gifted and non-gifted competent seventh-graders, and also to investigate the attributional patterns associated with self-concept across four domains of activity--social and academic achievement oriented success and failure. The study attempted to measure changes in…

In an initial section, this paper presents a review of the literature and discusses the hypothesized relationship between self-efficacy, (defined as personal judgments of how well one can organize and implement behaviors in situations that may contain novel, unpredictable and possibly stressful elements) and achievement behavior. Source of…

The project investigated differences in perceptions and attributions for successful and unsuccessful IEP (individualized education program) conferences between 85 mothers of mentally retarded and emotionally or behaviorally disabled children (5-15 years old) and 81 special education teachers. Trained parents (those who received information about…

Changes in students' perceptions of success and failure as they progressed through a diploma hospital nursing program were studied, in a replication of a study by Davidhizar. Weiner's attribution theory was also assessed to determine students views of the following explanations of success: effort, ability, task ease, or luck. Effort was cited as…

Two heads of department in contrasting schools explain why they do not use Level Descriptions at all, other than at the very end of Key Stage 3. Influenced by "assessment for learning" principles, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown develop a case for using assessment to help pupils grow in understanding of how the discipline of history…

Child care workers may derogate youth in order to restore their own sense of justice and may do so only when they feel organizationally and personally unable to help the youth. The relationship between child care workers' sense of power (both in their agencies and to help youth) and their perceptions of the youth was examined for a sample of 171…

The effects of labels, "mentally retarded" and "institutionalized" on the evaluations and causal attributions of nonretarded persons, and on the social distance preferences of EMR persons, were assessed. In addition, each group was asked to predict the likelihood of a labeled (mentally retarded) or a nonlabeled target person achieving success at a…