Causal Attributions of Underachieving Fourth-Grade Students in China, Japan, and the United States

Tuss, Paul; Zimmer, Jules M.; Ho, Hsiu‐Zu

doi:10.1177/0022022195264006

Cited by 50 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Stevenson and Lee (1990) reported that relative to Chinese and Japanese, American mothers stress their child's ability in explaining good performance at school. In a similar study, Tuss, Zimmer, and Ho (1995) found that Asian students perceive effort as a more important factor for success than American students do. The latter tend to attribute success to ability, task difficulty, and situational factors such as mood.…”

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confidence: 86%

Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student

Γεωργίου

Christou

Stavrinides

et al. 2002

Psychology in the Schools

114

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The aim of this study was to examine the relation between teacher attributions of student school failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student. A structural equation model was proposed and its ability to fit the data was tested. It was found that teachers tend to behave in ways that indicate more pity and less anger when they attribute a student's low achievement to her or his low abilities, whereas they express more anger when attributing low achievement to the student's low effort. In contrast to previous research that argues in favor of anger as a high ability cue, this study has found that the presence of anger was associated with a teacher tendency to give-up efforts to help the student improve. This giving-up behavior was negatively related to the tendency of the teachers to accept some responsibility for the student failure. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The most important beliefs that teachers have about students are those that deal with the teachers' perceptions of the causes of students' behavior (Clark & Peterson, 1986). These beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, and expectations determine, to a large extent, teacher behavior and teacher interaction patterns with students, especially the low-achieving ones (Brophy, 1985). Ainscrow (1998), for example, claimed that teacher attitudes toward a particular student guided the teaching methods that would be selected each time and the strategies used for instructing the student.This article examines the relationship between teacher attributions of student failure and teacher self-reported behavior toward the failing or low-achieving student. Attributions are special kinds of beliefs through which an individual explains observed events in a causal fashion. From a psychological point of view, the interpretation of an event is perhaps more important than the event itself. Thus, the examination of teacher attributions of student failure becomes justified. According to Miller (1995), attribution is the explanation and evaluation of behavior, both the behavior of others and our own. Heider (1958), who is considered by many to be the father of attribution theory, suggested that people are not content simply to observe events around them, but strive to understand their causes as well. In his earlier writings, he maintained that actions are usually attributed to stable and enduring factors, such as the actor's personality characteristics, rather than transitory or variable factors such as moods.Another leading figure in this area, Weiner (1985), proposed a three-dimensional taxonomy of attributions. According to this taxonomy, an attribution can be internal or external in terms of its locus, stable or unstable in terms of its stability over time, and controllable or uncontrollable by the acting individual (controllability). In educational settings, effort and ability are two major internal sources of attribution; the first is controllable but unstable, while the second is stable but uncontrollable. Examples of external attributions regarding success or failure at...

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confidence: 86%

Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student

Γεωργίου

Christou

Stavrinides

et al. 2002

Psychology in the Schools

114

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“…The central conceptual structure of number develops through two stages in early childhood. In the predimensional period, roughly at 4 years of age, children have two separate mathematical schemas: the global quantity schema that permits them to answer questions about ''more'' and ''less'', and the Whitmore, 1992;Jose, Huntsinger, Huntsinger, & Liaw, 2000;Stevenson et al, 1993;Tuss & Zimmer, 1995) have been considered as factors underlying Asian children's superior mathematical performance. However, since cross-cultural comparisons of mathematical performance have mainly focused on specific skills and particularly on children aged 6 years or above, our knowledge of the crosscultural differences in young children's combined general and specific numerical skills is limited.…”

Section: Young Children's Number Sensementioning

confidence: 99%

Young Children's Number Sense in China and Finland

Aunio

Niemivirta

Hautamäki

et al. 2006

Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research

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This study examined the influence of nationality, age and gender on Chinese (N5130) and Finnish (N5203) pre-schoolers' number sense. Two highly correlated aspects of number sense were extracted: one reflecting the children's ability to organise and compare quantities (i.e. relational skills), and another pertaining to their ability to operate with number-word sequence (i.e. counting skills). The results showed a significant age-related gain in both aspects of number sense, whereas no gender differences were found. With respect to counting skills, the Chinese children outperformed the Finnish children irrespective of age, whereas in relation to relational skills, this was true only among the older children. Differences in language, teaching and cultural ethos are considered as alternative explanations for the findings.

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“…Where regression has been used elsewhere in the identification of underachievers, it has relied almost exclusively on the school performance / mental ability test discrepancy described earlier (Lau and Chan 2001, Tuss et al 1995, Whitmore 1980. Our new study used a larger number of additional variables related to academic performance (such as gender, ethnicity, poverty, motivation and prior attainment) to enhance the model and hence predict examination performance at age 14.…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

What is ‘underachievement’ at school?1

Gorard

Smith²

2004

School Leadership & Management

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This paper formed the basis for our oral and written presentations to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills on the topic of underachievement. 'Underachievement' is now a widely used term in education policy and practice. It is used routinely to refer to nations, home nations and regions, to types and sectors of schooling, to physiological, ethnic and social groups, and to individuals. It has been used to mean simply low achievement, also lower achievement relative to another of these groups, and also lower achievement than would be expected by an observer. The paper presents examples of each. These multiple uses lead to considerable confusion which, coupled with common errors in assessing the proportionate difference between groups, mean that significant public money has been spent attempting to overcome problems that may not, indeed, exist. Where underachievement is understood to mean a lower level of achievement by an individual (or group) than would be expected using a model based on the best available predictors, then there is nothing we can know about underachieving individuals (or groups) that they have in common. They can not be disproportionately working-class males, for example, because class and sex would then be part of the 'best available predictors'. Even if, instead, we reserve some predictors from our best model, there is no evidence that underachievers have much in common (and examples from such models are presented in the paper). In raw-score terms, we might say that a particular social group exhibits lower achievement (in the sense of publicly available figures relating to pencil and paper tests) than another, as in the case of some ethnic groups. Or we might say that there is differential attainment between groups, as in the case of males and females. This is very far from saying that the lower-attaining group could and should do better on that assessment, or that the surface dissimilarity (such as ethnicity or sex) is in any way the cause of the difference in attainment. Making explicit what we mean by underachievement is an important step towards accepting that, collectively, we do not really mean anything by it. 3 Summary• 'Achievement' at school generally describes levels of attainment in public examinations such as

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Causal Attributions of Underachieving Fourth-Grade Students in China, Japan, and the United States

Cited by 50 publications

References 19 publications

Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student

Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student

Young Children's Number Sense in China and Finland

What is ‘underachievement’ at school?1

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