Attribution Theory

In education, attribution explains how beliefs of causes and outcomes effect expectations and behavior, with the four main factors for success and failure being ability, effort, difficulty and luck. This theory is much more complex than my brief description, but in a nutshell, it explains how and why some children see themselves as successful while others see themselves as failures. The most crucial factor in learning, and highly influential in attribution theory, is the interaction between teacher and student. As a classroom teacher, this is the aspect of the theory that is most relevant to my life. If teachers foster self-confidence, learning oriented behaviors and intrinsic motivation in students they will help develop the positive aspects of attribution.

When I reflect on my teaching I know that I need practice with providing attributional feedback to my students, and I will also make it a point to teach how to develop adaptive attributions. Motivation for Achievement provides many affective strategies for doing this, suggesting that teachers focus on supporting the recognition of effort over innate abilities. Recognizing the positive and negative results from productive effort vs. unproductive effort help students attribute their successes and failures to an attribute that they can control (effort) instead of one that is fixed and uncontrollable (ability).