Secondary school mathematics student teachers’ causal attribution for success and failure in mathematics

Savas Basturk

doi:10.30935/scimath/9477

Abstract

Attribution theory deals with the question of how individuals make judgments and seek to explain how they consider the causes of their behaviours and those of others. Attributions have the potential to affect beliefs, emotions and behaviour. Therefore, attribution theory has significantly contributed to the studies on motivation. This study examined student teachers’ causal attributions for success and failure in mathematics. The participants in this study were 28 student teachers in the department of secondary school mathematics education at a public university in the north of Turkey. To collect data, a questionnaire composed of one open-ended question was administered to the student teachers and they were asked to write their opinion about the causes of a student’s failure and success in mathematics. Student teachers wrote and submitted a reflection of one or two pages. Their written responses were examined and qualitatively analysed to determine the common themes by means of qualitative analysis software. The results have revealed that the student teachers categorize four causes to attribute for the students’ failure in mathematics: causes originating from students, causes originating from teaching and learning methods, causes originating due to the nature of mathematics itself and physical causes. The most frequent cause mentioned by the student teachers was innate math talent, an internal, stable and uncontrollable cause.

Highlights

By nature, people are interested in the events occurring around them and they often seek to find the answers to the question “why?” especially when they encounter something unexpected or unpleasant (Försterling, 2001; Wong & Weiner, 1981)
The results of the analysis of the student teachers’ responses show that they attribute four categories of causes to explain the students’ failure in mathematics which is listed as: causes resulting from students (26 student teachers [STs]), causes resulting from teaching and learning methods (24 STs), reasons due to the nature of mathematics itself (9 STs) and physical causes (4 STs)
Student teachers’ causal attributions related to student 26 student teachers expressed the causal attributions of success and failure in mathematics resulting from the student her/himself

Summary

Introduction

People are interested in the events occurring around them and they often seek to find the answers to the question “why?” especially when they encounter something unexpected or unpleasant (Försterling, 2001; Wong & Weiner, 1981) This interrogation leads us to attribute some causes to these events. People may think that outcomes happen independently or dependently of how they behave This is related to the internality‐externality dimension of causal attributions and it is called as the locus of control (internal or external). Based on the hypothesis that expectancy beliefs have an impact on behaviours, it can be asserted that the locus of control affects students’ achievement Students who accept their role in their successes and failures should be more motivated to participate in academics tasks; they expend effort

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