Cognition and Instruction/Attribution and Emotion

This chapter examines the role of attribution and emotion in teaching and learning. We will be discussing attribution theory, the four stages of the attributional process, methods for helping students cope with emotions, attributional retraining and implications for instruction. Any event that occurs in our everyday lives can be interpreted in a variety of ways, depending on what we identify as the cause of the event. Our causal attributions have consequences for our emotions and behaviours which, in turn, affect learning and achievement. Attribution theory classifies emotions and links them to types of attributions. As educators, we can take our student's affective and behavioural responses into consideration to ensure that they know how to cope with their emotions. In addition to our student's emotions, we should also be aware of our own feelings and how they are expressed towards our students. Attribution theory can be applied in the classroom environment by providing attributional retraining to students identify and change their maladaptive attributional responses.

Attribution Theory

We often come across events in our lives that can be interpreted in several different ways. The explanation that we come up with to describe the cause of an event is referred to as an attribution. The way an event is attributed causes us to react with a variety of responses. To study how people interpret events taking place in their lives, researchers use attribution theory. Attribution theory gives insight into why people have different responses to the same outcomes.

To illustrate the theory, imagine that two students take a math test and both end up receiving 60 percent. One student is very disappointed with herself and vows to create a study group in order to earn a better grade for the next test. She also goes to her teacher for extra help. The second student is angry when she sees her test grade and goes to her friends to see how they did. When she discovers that a few of her friends also performed poorly, she attributes her failure to a poorly written test. Although the outcomes of the situation are the same for both students, the way they interpret and respond to the experience is very different. Later on in the chapter, we will take a more in-depth look into how different attributions affect the way we cope with failure. We can gain a deeper understanding of why people make specific attributions, what the most common attributions are, what types of affective responses are elicited and the effect that attributional judgments have on our behaviour by studying the attributional process.

Importance of Attributions as a Predictor of How People Cope with Failure

The significance of attributions is highlighted in the study "Importance of Attributions as a Predictor of How People Cope with Failure" done by Follette and Jacobson. The purpose of this study is to replicate and expand on the research of Metalsky et al. (1982), which focuses on the reformulated learned helplessness model (RHL). Measuring general attributional style, specific attributions for examination performance and the prediction of motivational deficits, this study aims to emphasize the significance of attributions to help predict how people cope with failure in a classroom setting. We will be referring back to this study throughout the attribution theory section of this chapter.

One hundred and ten subjects from an upper division, undergraduate psychology course participated in the study. There were 28 men and 82 women. The participants were asked to complete the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, 1967), the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ; Peterson & Seligman, 1984) and an additional questionnaire including the following questions: “What grade do you expect to get on the next exam?”, “What grade would make you happy?” and “What grade would make you unhappy?” The questionnaire period was labelled as Time 1. Following this, the students completed an adjective checklist (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965). It was used to assess three types of moods, including anxiety, hostility and depression. This assessment took place 12 days after Time 1 and 2 days before the actual examination. Seven days after Time 2, students completed the last step in the study, designated as Time 3. Their actual examination grades were returned along with the final package of questionnaires. The package included the checklist for assessing mood, two forms soliciting the students’ attributions for their examination performance, a questionnaire asking about their future plans to help prepare the next examination and a request asking them to report their actual grade. The study concluded with a final debriefing of the participants.

The materials used in this study include the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire, Mood Affect Adjective Check List, Exam attributional measures and the Planned Behaviours Questionnaire.

The EASQ distributed to the students measures attributional style for negative hypothetical events. The participants were asked to imagine themselves in each situation and write down a possible cause for the event. There was an equal distribution of both affiliative and achievement situations. Examples include, “You have been looking for a job unsuccessfully for some time” and “You meet a friend who acts hostilely to you”. The participants were then asked to rate the cause of each situation using a 7-point Likert scale. The first three dimensions are internal-external (ranging from completely due to others to completely due to my own efforts), stable-unstable (ranging from will never be present again to will always be present) and global-specific (ranging from influences only this situation to influences all situations). Peterson and Seligman added a fourth dimension, control-no control that asked subjects of the study to rate the degree of control that they believed they would have in each event. The calculated score of this study was only based on the first three scales.

The Mood Affect Adjective Check List Today Form (MAACL; Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965) is comprised of 132 items that are used to detect the subjects’ moods based on three dimensions: depression, anxiety and hostility. In addition to measuring depressed mood at one point in time, the MAACL was also used to assess the change in participants’ mood over a short period of time in this study.

Students’ attributions for their grade on the examination were measured in two ways. Firstly, participants were given an indirect probe, which requested that they list their thoughts and feelings about their performance on the exam. There were several boxes on the form, in each of which subjects were asked to list one thought or feeling. The participants were told that they did not have to fill in all the boxes. This method of examining attributions allowed for more spontaneous thinking and was potentially less reactive compared to some of the instruments traditionally used in attribution research. For the second part of the exam attributional measures, the subjects were then asked to rate the cause of their examination performance with the Likert ratings that were used in the EASQ. The cause of the event was rated on the four dimensions: internal-external, stable-unstable, global-specific, and control-no control dimensions. For each of the student’s responses to the indirect probe, two trained undergraduate coders rated whether an attributional thought was developed. Statements that explained possible causes for a participant’s examination performance were coded as attributions. Examples include: “The test was deceptively easy,” “My score reflected the fact that I had two midterms and an assignment due on the same day,” and “I should study harder.”

The Planned Behaviours Questionnaire (PBQ) was designed by the authors specifically to use in this study. Participants were asked to give an estimate of the number of hours they spent studying for the examination they had just completed. Following this, they were then asked to estimate the number of hours they intended to spend studying in preparation for the next exam. Finally, the questionnaire was concluded with this final question: “Do you intend to do anything different from what you did to prepare for this exam when studying for any future exams in this class? “Please list anything new that you plan to do in preparation for the next exam” The new behaviours listed were counted to see how many participants chose the same method in order to study for the next exam in this class.

The regression analyses of the study were comprised of several factors. The preexamination MAACL depression score was a covariate that was entered in into the equation first. Next, the degree of stress was added into the equation. This variable was the difference between the score that would make the participant happy and the actual examination grade that they received, based on the traditional 0.0-4.0 grading scale. The greater the discrepancy between the two grades, the higher the stress score the participant received. The third component that was entered into the equation was the composite attributional style variable. This variable was calculated by taking the sum of internal-external, stable-unstable and global specific dimensions for hypothetical situations on the EASQ. The final and most important component entered into the equation was the product vector of the interaction between attributional style and stress level to test the diathesis-stress model of depressed mood. Table 1 and Table 2 can be found with the study here.

Additional results of the study showed that under high stress conditions, the tendency to make internal, stable and global attributions resulted in greater depression. For students that received a grade within close proximity to the grade that would make them happy, their attributional styles did not have an effect on their mood. Because no correlation was found between the attributions made for hypothetical events and real life stressors, a similar correlation was calculated for the study. The results showed that only the attributions made based on real life situations were useful in explaining variability in mood.

The Four Stages of the Attributional Process

The attributional process is comprised of four main components. One is outcome evaluation, the process of determining whether or not an outcome is favoured. The second is attributional responses, the explanations we attribute to causing the result. The third is affective responses, the emotional responses that follow the interpretation of the outcome and the last is behavioural responses, the course of action that we take to respond to the experience. One main aspect of the attributional process to keep in mind is that specific events do not trigger behavioural reactions directly. These responses only take place after the outcome is cognitively interpreted. All four of these stages can be observed in the previously mentioned study.

Outcome Evaluation

Outcome evaluation refers to the process by which we determine whether an outcome is desired or not. These evaluations are based on several criteria. One is the individual’s prior history to encountering similar outcomes. An example of this could be a student that consistently excels in math class, but receives an average test score on his final exam. He could interpret this outcome as undesirable. Another aspect of outcome evaluation is performance feedback. A student that falls below a pre-established standard may view his performance as unfavourable. Evaluations of various outcomes are also dependent on the characteristics of the person, such as the need for success, the perceived value of the task and the expectations of others. The final standard for outcome evaluation is based on cues from others. When a student regularly exceeds expectations, submitting an average assignment may be deemed unfavourable by their teacher, while his classmates can turn in work of the same quality and receive praise from the teacher. These four components make up the criteria for outcome evaluation. Using our previous example from above, we can say that both of the students deemed their math test outcome unfavourable, leading them to make their own attributional responses.

Attributional Responses

The second step of the attributional process is explaining the outcome with a particular cause. Follette and Jacobson's study shows examples of various attributional styles using the hypothetical situations of the EASQ and the exam attributional measures. Examples from the study show attributions based on internal and external sources, stable and unstable conditions and global-specific influences. We can also consider our previous example. Upon seeing her mediocre test mark, the first student attributes her poor performance to her lack of preparedness. The second student responds by putting the blame on the quality of the test written by her teacher. The difference in the two students’ responses can be better explained by the locus of control.

Locus of Causality

Attributional responses are interpreted in three dimensions. The first dimension is the locus of causality, which defines the outcome as being caused by an internal or external source. One example of an internal cause is mood. The performance of a student can be affected by mood, which is controlled by the student himself. An external variable affecting performance may be the student’s parents. This is an example of an external variable because the student’s parents have an effect on his performance but the student himself has no control over the situation. In reference to the study, both internal and external attributions were made about the students' examination scores. One student attributes their score to having two midterms and an assignment due on the same day. This student attributes their failure to an external source rather than considering a lack of preparedness. An example of an internal cause from the study is a student that attributes their below average test score to the minimal effort that they put into studying for the exam.

Stability

The second dimension of attributional responses is stability. It is defined by how consistent the factor is when encouraging success. Various aspects of performance such as ability, effort and luck can be ranked in terms of how stable each condition is. The dimension of stability is frequently connected to a person’s expectancy of success. If a student attributes their success to a typically stable variable such as ability, it is highly plausible that past success will occur again. On the other hand, if a student attributes their success to a more random cause such as luck, there is a much smaller chance of seeing repeated success. Participants of the study were asked to rate the cause of an event ranging from never being present again to always being the reason for this situation to occur.

Controllability

Controllability is the third and final dimension of the attributional responses. It describes the degree to which the individual can influence the cause behind the outcome. Several factors such as effort and strategy use can be highly controlled whereas ability and interest are considered less controlled. Uncontrollable causes, such as the difficulty of a task and luck do not contribute to an individual’s repeated success. There is a strong connection between the controllability dimension and the amount of effort and persistence an individual puts into completing a task. Outcomes deemed more uncontrollable tend to encourage anxiety and avoidance strategies while more controlled variables can lead to increased effort and persistence.that appear from the matrix can elicit numerous affective and behavioural responses.

Affective Responses

The various attributional combinations that result from the three dimensions produce different, though highly predictable emotional responses. The locus of control is most commonly linked to the affective response an individual experiences after a specific outcome. Drawing back on our previous example, the first student attributes her poor performance to lack of preparedness, which is an internal cause involving the amount of effort put into the task. This results in the student feeling a sense of disappointment or shame because effort is a controllable factor. With these same conditions, pity is most appropriate to be elicited by others. In contrast, the second student interprets her mediocre grade as being caused by an external factor. She experiences anger because the situation has external, controllable and stable causes. Other combinations of the three dimensions can produce different results. For a student feeling gratitude, it is most likely due to an external, uncontrollable and unstable factor such as an easy test. For all the emotional responses that are elicited, they are followed by a behavioural course of action. Follette and Jacobson's study showed that participants displayed feelings of disappointment following the reveal of their exam scores.

Behavioural Responses

The understanding of an outcome determines what an individual will do after the situation is interpreted. For attributions in which the locus of control is the prominent dimension, the individual elicits internal feelings of confidence, satisfaction and pride. The behavioural responses resulting from an external locus are help seeking in a positive manner, learned helplessness, avoidance, and lack of persistence when the situation is interpreted negatively. With attributions critically relating to stability, the behavioural response elicited commonly results in higher success expectancies. In turn, the individual develops higher levels of task engagement, seeks out challenges more often and performs to a higher standard. When attributions are more closely linked to controllability, the individual becomes more persistent and puts in a greater amount of effort to complete a task. The two students from our above example display contrasting behavioural responses to their same outcome. The first student vows to put in more work to receive the grade she deserves. In the future, if she succeeds in earning a higher grade on her next math test, she can attribute her success to her increased effort and persistence. In turn she will feel more confident and proud of her abilities. For the second student, her attributions cause her to feel anger due to an external source. Because her interpretation of the event is negative, it is highly predictable that she will develop a sense of learned helplessness, become avoidant towards taking math tests and lack persistence in preparing for test taking. Drawing on the study "Importance of Attributions as a Predictor of How People Cope with Failure," students showed different behavioural responses based on what they attributed their test scores to. Responses from the study included: "I will ask the teacher what I did wrong," "I plan to do the reading earlier in preparation for the next exam," and "I will stay on campus to study with my friends that are also in the class." These are some of the behavioural responses that can occur due to a variety of attributions.

Emotions

Emotion is a state of feelings. It represents human reactions and responses to the stimuli. It can foster humans well-being, or can contribute to psychological and physical function. There are two main types of emotions that can be classified: positive emotions and negative emotions. Positive emotions can include happiness, compassion, gratitude, hope, interest, enjoyment, joy, love and pride. Whereas negative emotions can include anger, fear, disgust, sadness, anxiety, shame, hopelessness and boredom. These two emotions both consist of a pattern of cognitive, physiological and behavioural reactions to events that have relevance to important goals such as learning. In order to understand the reason why people respond to learning differently, we could look at the impact of emotions. There are four types of components: attribution response, emotion, learning and achievement. We will first look at how emotion is a response to learning, and vice versa. Different learning patterns, styles and outcomes that people are attributing will represent different emotions. Also, different emotions will impact different academic achievements.

Positive Emotions	Negative Emotions
happiness	sadness
joy	fear
gratitude	disgust
hope	hopelessness
interest	anxiety
enjoyment	boredom
pride	anger

Attribution and Learning about Emotions

Learning and Emotion

In the Learning Theory, it states that effective learning is depending on emotional responses. In different learning environment and situations, it will trigger different emotions in learning. Individuals differ in emotional responses to situations. When the learners are feeling comfortable and in control with the learning environment, learners will have a better performance. It is because the learners would adapt the environment when they are learning. They would feel comfortable and help increase the learning process. In contrast, if learners are feeling uncomfortable and not in control of the environment, the learner will not perform as well. It is because the learners can not adapt the learning environment while learning, which negatively affects the learning process. Therefore, they may perform worse. In the learning environment, it is necessary to have certain emotions present: Learners must be able to control and overcome negative emotions like fear, anxiety and sadness. Therefore, positive emotions such as the sense of accomplishment and enthusiasm can be increased. It is because negative emotions are negatively affecting the learning and positive emotions are positively affecting the learning. This mean that, positive emotions are more likely to achieve higher academic performance while negative emotions are more likely to achieve lower academic performance.

In a study of The relations between students' approaches to learning, experienced emotions and outcomes if learning, it stated that there is a relationship between the emotions and academic performance in students experience. The sample of this study was studying the first year biology course in University of Sydney. They are all age 18 to 25 years. The participants took The Revised Study Process Questionnaire to self-report their learning strategy and learning motives. The researchers linked emotions with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which are associated to learning performance. The study showed that students with anger and boredom avoided engaging in learning the resulting learning outcome. Also, students with anxiety and shame reduced their intrinsic motivation in learning activities that lower their academic achievement. Students who were angry and frustrated were less likely to adopt strategies in learning and have a more negative learning outcome. In contrast, all students with positive emotions engaged in learning, being motivation during activities and adopted strategies in learning, which have a more positive learning outcome. This means that, motivation and self-efficacy are also related the students' emotions in learning. The following table shows different emotions affect learning patterns and styles and results different learning outcomes in the study.

Emotions	Learning patterns and styles	Learning outcomes
Pride, hope, confidence, enjoyment, optimistic and proud	prepare the assessment for the course contribute course materials make sure everything is going well for the course feeling pride and confident of the result follow the progress in the course	increase academic performance
Frustration, anger and boredom	feeling bored of the course get angry with the course get annoyed when trying the learning activities for the course	decrease academic performance
Anxiety and shame	ashamed thinking for the assessment become panicky about the course feeling embarrassed for not contributing to learning activities ashamed of not preparing for course do not contribute to class discussion do not ask question during class	decrease academic performance

A graph of emotion and academic achievement. As students experienced more positive emotion, their academic achievement will increase. While students experienced more negative emotions, their academic achievement will decrease.

Attribution and Emotion

Rainer Reisenzein, a psychologist in University of Greifswald, who interests in computational belief-desire theory of emotion. He focuses research on theoretical and empirical questions related to emotion and motivation by interdisciplinary orientation toward philosophy and cognitive science. In one of his attributional approach studies, he addresses that our belief is based on the causes of the events that determine emotion and behaviors. He also states that the attributional theory of emotion provides a cognitive analysis for the cause of emotions. The appraisal dimensions related to causal attribution is also generally the appraisal theory of emotion. Different from other cognitive appraisal theories, the attributional theory of emotion provides not just the analysis of the cognitive causes of emotions, but also emphasizes the effects of the emotions, especially focusing on the functional effects in emotions. There are two effects in emotions. First, the motivational emotion effect. It means that emotions evoke people’s action tendencies to the situation as appraised. Second, the communicative emotion effect. It means the emotions provide information about people's experiences in situation appraisals and action tendencies to the environment. It can show that attribution is related to emotions. Moreover, the impact of attributions and emotions are connected in learning behavior, which in turn, influences subsequent academic achievement. Self-control is one of the characteristic in attribution. Individual differences in self-control associates different self-regulatory abilities. It is defined as the capacity to modify one’s internal responses of impulses, emotions, thought and behaviors. The conceptualization of self-control guides individuals towards goals and standards. This mean that, self-control can alter learners to achieve their desired goals. In King et al’s 2014 study, it investigated how self-control is related to students' experience of academic emotions by taking individual differences for the examination. It found that self-control is positively predicts positive academic emotions. Having higher self-control can predict more positive emotions, with better engagement and higher achievement in school. In the Control-Value Theory, control and values-related appraisals are the predictors of achievement emotions. When learners have a high control-related appraisal and high value-related appraisal, they will be more likely to experience positive academic emotions. When learner has a low control-related appraisal and low value-related appraisal, they will be more likely to experience negative academic emotions. . Figure 1 shows the basic propositions of the control-value theory.

Furthermore, self control has proved that it can be a negative predictor of behavioral and emotional disaffection. It can inhibit learners to display disengaged behaviors and emotions. This means that self-control had a direct affect on academic achievement, which will be discussed later.

Fig. 1 Basic propositions of Control-Value theory of achievement emotions

Emotions and Attributional Responses

Different attributions in individual can predict emotions. A study from Follette and Jacobson shows that different learning styles and patterns that attribute to examination could predict emotion reactions. They examined that the causal attributions were predictive of depressed mood in college students who experienced the negative event. They found that internal, global and stable attributional responses have a tendency toward depression. In order to understand how emotions and attributional responses are related, individuals need to understand more about their own self.

In 2006, Bar-On addressed that understanding of yourself and others, relating well to people and adapting to attribute with the immediate surroundings will help you to be more successful in dealing with environmental demands. Adapting attribution associates to our emotional intelligence (EI). Emotional Intelligence is an ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions. It can discriminate different emotions and label them appropriately and to use the emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. There are three components that contribute to EI: persistent effort, locus of control and self-efficacy. If learners are high in these three components, they will have a high EI and they will more likely to be successful. In contrast, if learners are low in those three components, they will have a low EI and they will more likely to have failure and emotion problem. To maintain and develop a high EI, learners can focus on their stress management, which is emotional management and regulation. There are two elements in stress management: stress tolerance and impulse control. Learners need to manage and control emotions effectively and constructively to achieve the stress management.

Attributions vary along three dimensions: locus of control, stability and controllability. Each dimension is related with a type of affective response. Different combinations of the dimension will have different emotional reactions. This means that, different combinations in attributions dimensions will result different emotions. In Weiner's attribution theory, the three dimensions shows different emotion results. For example, internal, controllable and stable factors will experience pride and confidence; external, uncontrollable and unstable factors will experience gratitude; external, controllable and stable will cause anger; and internal, uncontrollable and stable will cause a feeling of shame. As different attributional responses will cause different emotions, in turn, it is affecting the academic achievement as well. The following table shows attributional dimension emotions.

Different combinations of attributional dimension results different emotions.

Emotion and Academic Achievement

Emotion and psychological state can determine learning productivity. Higher learning productivity will more likely to have a more positive emotion. As positive emotions can stimulate self-motivation, it is saying that learner’s self-control would be stimulated as well. Learners that have a higher self-control are more successful in school because it is also relating how learners feel in school, and which of the emotions are affecting school activities. In addition, to study the relationship between emotions and academic achievement, academic emotions are involved. Academic emotions are identified in enjoyment, hope, pride, anger, anxiety, shame, boredom and hopelessness. Different emotions can be classified into different valence and activation circumstances. Positive-activating emotions are enjoyment, hope and pride; the positive-deactivating emotion is relief; negative-activating emotions are anger, hope and pride; and negative-deactivating emotions are hopelessness and boredom.

Emotions can also facilitate academic engagement, which in turn, influences subsequent academic achievement. Positive emotions are more likely to increase learning engagement, which is positively to achieve a higher academic grade. In contrast, negative emotions are more likely to be disengaged from schooling process, which is negatively to receive a lower academic grade. Learners who passively withdraw and feel boredom and anxiety in school will increase disaffection. Therefore, they will be more likely to experience low academic achievement. Emotions and academic achievement have a direct relation. Reason why learners who experience low school outcome are because their negative emotions promote withdrawal and disengagement in school. As learners who experience positive emotions will engage in their studies, which is beneficial to their academic career. However, there are exceptions too. Emotions and academic achievement can be affected inversely.

King et al.’s study examined the possibility that positive emotions lower academic achievement. There is a diminishing return on emotions and achievement. When the learner’s positive emotions achieved to the optimal level of academic score, his or her academic achievement will return to the marginal. However, differences are individual as different people experiences different circumstances. Moreover, a study found that students in China who dispose negative emotions such as anger would increase their grade point average (GPA). Yet, there are no relation between anger and GPA. Furthermore, lacking school attention has shown that positive emotions would increase. However, the experimenter explained that positive emotions are difficult to recognize. Even though experiments can be recorded in a digital way, many positive emotions share a similar facial expression. There are no significant differences that can be recognize in positive emotions, as a result, the outcome might not be accurate. Also, many studies stated that positive emotions usually appear after a solving problem task, which people are less likely to be aware of. Negative emotions are generally to be viewed as more troublesome in children’s development and functioning. This is saying that, negative emotions are more likely to have investigating attention.

In conclusion, emotion is associated with academic competences. Individual differences in emotions are engaging into different attribution styles. Self-control, self-motivation, engagement, locus of control and stability are affecting learners and which behaviors they present. Positive emotions are more likely to increase academic achievement, while negative emotions are less likely to decrease academic achievement. Emotions are related to academic success because it contains a useful information to guide and predict cognition and actions. In addition, to help low academic achievement learners to improve their learning, educators should encourage students to minimize the experiences of negative emotions. Students should engage in positive thinking to attribute for their academic styles. Furthermore, student can seek help from family and professionals. To discuss more about how students attribute learning and emotions, a classroom setting can be looked at.

Attributions and Emotions in the Classroom

Students all bring different emotions and attributions with them into the classroom. Although many of these students may bring in positive attributions, equally as many students may carry negative attributions with them into their academic lives. The teacher plays an essential role in helping students figure out their emotions at school, why they feel them, and how they could possibly improve. By helping students learn about their emotions in the classroom, the students are better able to focus on how emotions and what other extraneous factors may affect how they learn. Once students understand how their emotions affect their learning, they are better able to create a learning environment and figure out which strategies for dealing with their emotions work best. It is important that teachers show students’ how emotions affect how they attribute both positive and negative situations and to learn about unfavorable behaviors and attributions early on so that they are better able to learn to avoid them throughout their academic career.

Attributional Retraining

One of the main ways teachers can help students improve their mindset is by attributional retraining which is helping students get a better understanding of their attributional responses and how to change their response so that they are more encouraged to stay focused. The main focus of attributional retraining is to shift student’s focus from their ability shown to the effort put forth in the classroom. By doing this it emphasizes to students that their performance and success or failures in class are due to controllable factors such as their effort. Whereas if students attributed their successes and failures on something uncontrollable such as their ability, they would quickly become discouraged after receiving negative feedback or a low score as many students attribute one’s ability with self-efficacy. As a result, attributional retraining could help assist students in motivation, task persistence and achievement levels. There are many ways that teachers can help students understand their attributions. One of the main ways this can be done is simply by reminding the students that their scores are not attributed to their ability. School is becoming increasingly competitive and many students are focused on the marks that they are receiving. By constantly reminding students that any low mark they are receiving is attributed to their effort in the classroom, it may encourage them to try harder during their next assignment.

There are four main steps to attributional retraining. The first step is getting individuals to identify undesirable behaviors that they may have. These behaviors could include things like task avoidance. Being able to identify these behaviors early allows these behaviors to be easily evaluated and changed. It is important for both the student and the teacher to work together on identifying these behaviors early on. By not identifying these problems early, students may lose learning opportunities that could be easily fixed. The second step is evaluating the underlying negative behavior. This could be evaluating how serious the situation and behavior may be and what could be causing the student to have such behaviors. Generally these could be due to internal factors, which require immediate attention or could be caused by extraneous factors that may be hindering that student’s performance at that moment. The third step is considering how to change the student’s attributional response. It is important to figure out what is best for the student and what kind of attributions could take its place. By implementing the wrong new attribution, it could potentially hinder the student’s performance further. Depending on the student, finding a new attribution could be a difficult task or it may be very clear. Every student is different. And the last step is implementing the new attribution, which must be done by finding the most suitable way to implement the new attribution. It is not beneficial for students to implement the new attribution if it does not work well with their learning style. Students and teachers must work collaboratively to ensure that the new attributions being implemented are what is most suitable for the student.

Understanding Our Own Emotional Reactions

Teachers should be wary of how their students perceive success and failure and which ones make negative attributions after experiencing failure. Showing negative emotion is normal, however some emotions can be perceived as more harmful than others. It is important for the teacher to educate and remind students that learning how to redirect their attributional thinking can change their emotions. However it is equally as important to teach students about emotional intelligence, which is learning to understand one and others emotions, relating to people, and learning to deal with environmental demands by adapting to the new surroundings. By teaching emotional intelligence, students and teachers are better able to understand their emotions in the classroom and why they feel them in different situations. Students would also learn to control their emotions during both success and failures in and around the classroom. It is important to emphasize positive emotions as it has been seen to have more positive effects on students. The broaden-and-build theory states that positive emotions can help expand a student’s engagement in activities as well as encourage students to delve deeper into learning materials and expand their focus whereas negative emotions narrow the focus of students and do not allow for optimal learning. Having positive emotions towards learning provides a better learning environment for students, which may allow for more positive attributional thinking when feedback is given. Although it is important to emphasize positive emotions, it is also important to remind students that it is okay to feel negative emotions as well. Negative emotions are a regular occurrence in the classroom and should not be discouraged. All students handle situations differently and showing negative emotion might be a way for the student to cope with a situation that they are not used to. As educators, it is important to figure out with the student why they may be feeling this negative emotion and how to best handle it.

Implications for Instruction

Effects on Students

One of the most important things educators can do is begin discussing attributions and their effects from an early age. It is an integral part of the classroom and is something that should be focused on. By explaining to students the subtle differences between attributing something to ability rather than lack of effort, you remind them that knowledge is not innate and is something that can be learned. This is especially important when students are first beginning school so that it builds a strong foundation for them as they progress through the grades. It should also be reminded to students throughout the school year as students can often become discouraged when they find tasks difficult or receive unfavorable marks. Since school is becoming increasingly competitive in terms of admission standards to post secondary institutions, it is important to remind students constantly that although grades are important, they are not tied to a low mark that they may receive.

Commonly, students may find that they experience difficulty in the classroom, which is due to many controllable factors. These factors may include a lack of prior knowledge, and automaticity. It is important to remind these students that the difficulty they experience is due to extraneous factors and not themselves so that they do not become discouraged when learning new material or understanding new concepts. By creating a student-centered approach in the classroom, we are creating a learning environment where personal growth and change are prioritized. This kind of approach allows the students to be less frustrated when they do not understand a concept right away or when they receive negative feedback. The emphasis of this approach is that knowledge can always be learned and is not dependent on your innate ability or prior knowledge. By approaching learning in this kind of way, it is teaching and instilling in students to be persistent and to keep trying even if it takes them longer to understand concepts or they do not succeed the first time around. Students may also seek help if they believe that what is holding them back is an environmental factor rather than a personal one. This is because they do not hold their difficulties personally but rather believe other things cause them. Whereas many students may not seek assistance in class if they are struggling because they do not want to be perceived as incompetent in the eyes of their peers or their professor. It is important to instill early on in students that the difficulties they face are due to controllable factors.

There are many extraneous factors that could be affecting student performance. Students may be struggling in class for many different reasons. One of the main reasons that students could be struggling is by not knowing how to best apply appropriate strategies that maximize their learning potential. As educators it is important to try to help students learn what methods work best for them in acquiring new information. Another reason that students could be struggling is lack of prior knowledge. If students are unable to best apply learning strategies and it is not noticed by an educator, students may fall behind and not have the appropriate prior knowledge to learn new concepts. It is important as an educator to remember that these extraneous factors are controllable causes which may be hindering the student’s ability to reach their fullest potential. Reminding the students that these things can be changed as well is important so that the students may not become discouraged for something that can be fixed. Monitoring and discussing with students regularly what may be affecting their performance is important as it allows the teacher to have a better understanding of how the student is doing and how it can be bettered.

When teachers are providing feedback to students, it is important to be mindful of how it is given. Students who have a lower self-esteem may benefit from feedback that is given privately rather than in front of the class. It may also be beneficial when directing praise in front of the class as it may cause provide low-ability cues to students unintentionally. One way to effectively provide feedback is to provide information-oriented feedback rather than performance-oriented feedback. Information-oriented feedback emphasizes how a student’s performance can improve where as performance-oriented feedback emphasizes how a student is progressing in relation to their peers. If students are provided feedback in relation to the other students, they may attribute their lower score to their ability and become discouraged in class, as they may not be progressing as quickly as some of the other students. As educators it is important to try to keep students from comparing themselves to each other as students will be discouraged and feel negatively about school. But by providing feedback basked solely on the students’ progress, it allows for personal growth rather than comparison to others, which is more beneficial for students with low self-esteem. This also teaches students that education is about personal progress and knowledge acquisition rather than comparing themselves to other students. The lack of comparison may keep students motivated to continue pursuing new knowledge.

According to the control value theory, emotions are directly related achievement, cognitive, motivational processes. Generally positive emotions are correlated with an increase in students’ motivation while negative emotions reduce students’ motivation. It is important that students use these positive emotions to attempt to become intrinsically motivated in school. When students are intrinsically motivated, they are more likely to persist when they encounter difficult problems or concepts in their learning. Teachers are a large part of helping students develop these behaviors. It is important that teachers create a learning environment that sets a positive example for the student. Students are greatly influenced by the teacher and the environment of the classroom. By creating a positive learning environment, students may feel more inclined to be positive about their learning. The teacher student relationship is also one of the most important things that can help students academically. By having positive, nurturing and supportive teachers, students are able to develop self-confidence and a sense of self-determination, which will in turn affect their learning behaviors. Once students are intrinsically motivated to do well in school, they will be more likely to create positive attributions between themselves and what they are learning.

However it is important to remember that all students begin with different attributions and ways to deal with them and they learn and process information differently. Techniques used in helping students change their attributions and learn to control their emotions vary greatly between students. As with all techniques, it is important for the teacher and student to work collaboratively in finding out what works best for that individual. One of the ways that this can be done is by discussing with the student different learning strategies that may work best for them and having the teacher monitor the student in class to see if it is effective. This can also be done through trial and error of different techniques until one is found to be most effective for that student or group of students. Once an effective method is found, it can be implemented not only in academic situations, but also in all aspects of a student’s life. By learning what methods works best and really understanding the student, it creates an easier learning environment that is more beneficial for everyone involved.The most important aspect is merely teaching students about their attributions and how it affects them in the classroom. Learning how to affectively attribute their successes and failures will help to further their academic career. Even though it may take some time to fully understand their attributions, the mere knowledge of it will help students to become aware of why they may feel a certain way in class. It definitely will take time for students to fully learn what methods work best for them but by teaching them about their attributions early, they are better able to carry this knowledge with them throughout their academic career.

Suggested Readings

1. Zahed-Babelan, A., & Moenikia, M. (2010). The role of emotional intelligence in predicting students’ academic achievement in distance education system. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 1158-1163.
2. Valiente, C., Swanson, J., & Eisenberg, N. (2011). Linking Students’ Emotions and Academic Achievement: When and Why Emotions Matter. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 129-135.
3. King, R., & Gaerlan, M. (2013). High self-control predicts more positive emotions, better engagement, and higher achievement in school. European Journal of Psychology of Education Eur J Psychol Educ, 29, 81-100.
4. Follette, V. M., & Jacobson, N. S. (1987). Importance of attributions as a predictor of how people cope with failure. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 52(6), 1205-1211. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.52.6.1205
5. Trigwell, K., Ellis, R., & Han, F. (2011). The relations between students' approaches to leaning, experienced emotions and outcomes if learning' Studies in Higher Education, 37(7), 811-824.
6. Matuliauskaite, A., & Zemeckyte, L. (2011). Analysis of interdependencies between students’ emotions, learning productivity, academic achievements and physiological parameters. Science - Future of Lithuania, 3(2), 51-56.
7. Naude, L. n., Bergh, T., & Kruger, I. (2014). 'Learning to like learning': an appreciative inquiry into emotions in education. Social Psychology Of Education, 17(2), 211-228.

Glossary

• Affective responses: the emotional responses that follow the interpretation of the outcome
• Behavioural responses: the course of action is taken to respond to the experience
• Controllability: the degree to which a factor can be influenced
• Attribution: explanation to describe the cause behind an event
• Attributional responses: the explanations attributed to causing a specific result
• Attribution theory: the study of how people interpret various events
• Locus of control: defines the outcome as being caused by an internal or external source
• Outcome evaluation: the process by which an outcome is considered a success or a failure
• Stability: how consistent the factor is in encouraging success
• Learning theory: a conceptual frameworks on how information is absorbed, processed, and retained during learning
• Control- value theory: relationship between level of controllability and value and the achievement in emotions
• Achievement emotions: the mental state of feeling that attribute to achievement
• Emotion Intelligence: ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, to communicate effectively and to overcome challenges
• Diminishing Return: a decreasing effect on a product that passing to marginal level after the optimal point
• Attributional Retraining: helping students better understand their attributional responses
• Information-oriented Feedback: feedback regarding how an individual student's performance can be improved
• Performance-oriented Feedback: feedback regarding how a student is progressing in comparison to their peers