Teachers' attributions for students' academic success and failure and the relationship to teaching level and teacher feedback practices

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine, in a population of first year teachers, the attributions that teachers hold for the causes of students' academic success and academic failure and the relationship between these attributions and both teaching level and teacher feedback practices. The attribution model was adapted from that proposed by Cooper & Burger (1980). The sample for the study was 214 practicing teachers who were completing their first year as classroom teachers. The results of this study suggest the following: (1) that internal attributions are considered to be of greater importance than external attributions in accounting for both student academic success and student academic failure; (2) that elementary, middle, and high school teachers do differ in the importance they assign individual attributions to account for students' academic failure, but they do not differ in the importance they assign individual attributions to account for students' academic success; and (3) that the emphases teachers indicate giving to three of seven selected feedback practices generally do relate to the importance they assign to external attributions to account for students' academic performance.