Multiple causal attributions: An investigation of college students learning a foreign language
- PDF / 450,904 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 19 Downloads / 178 Views
Multiple causal attributions: An investigation of college students learning a foreign language Ying Dong & Robert H. Stupnisky & J. Colleen Berry
Received: 12 September 2012 / Revised: 19 February 2013 / Accepted: 27 February 2013 / Published online: 22 March 2013 # Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa, Portugal and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Past research has typically examined only single causal attributions for each student’s academic performance; however, it may be the case that students make several unique attributions for a single outcome. Learning a new language has been reported as being a difficult task that may elicit a number of explanations for success and failure. Therefore, the current study examined the multiple causal attributions of 156 North American college students in foreign language classes. Open-ended questions that allowed students to report as many as three different causal ascriptions for both their success and failure in learning a foreign language revealed that students make a wide variety of multiple explanations for their performance. Ratings of these causes indicated that the multiple attributions differed along Weiner’s (Psychological Review, 92, 548–573, 1985) causal dimensions of internal/external, stable/unstable, and personal control/external control within each student. It was also found that the pattern of causal attributions was different between success and failure causes. The importance of considering multiple causal attributions for performance outcomes is discussed. Keywords Attributions . Multiple attributions . Foreign language learning . College students
Y. Dong (*) Department of Teaching and Learning, University of North Dakota, Education Building, 231 Centennial Drive Stop 7189, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. H. Stupnisky Department of Educational Foundations and Research, University of North Dakota, Education Building, 231 Centennial Drive Stop 7189, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. C. Berry Chinese Studies, University of North Dakota, Merrifield Hall, 276 Centennial Drive Stop 8198, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8198, USA e-mail: [email protected]
1588
Y. Dong et al.
Weiner (1985) argued that attributions reflect students’ explanations for their success or failure and affect their future expectations, emotions, motivation, and academic performance. Much of the previous attributional research has focused on single causal attributions with a single set of causal dimensions and their impact on student outcomes (Cortes-Suarez 2008; Hsieh and Schallert 2008). However, this may not reflect students’ true perceptions because they may be making multiple causal attributions for each outcome, representing an array of distinct causal dimensions, which together impact their cognitions, emotions, motivation, and performance. Weiner (2010) recently suggested that future research should focus on causal dimensions (i.e., locus of causality, stability, controllability)
Data Loading...
