Search

A study of the relationship between student perceptions and learning behaviors attempted to answer the questions: (1) What are the perceptions of academic responsibility of the students? (2) How different are their perceptions when school, class, level of performance, and gender are different? and (3) To what extent is their perception of responsibility related to their learning outcome? Subjects, 291 male and female adolescent students from five schools in Singapore, completed the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility (IAR) Scale. Results indicated that the students have a sense of responsibility and are more likely to accept blame for failure than personal credit for success. This response is stronger among high achievers and top classes than for lower achievers and classes, and also stronger among girls than boys. No correlation was found between students' responses to successful or positive events and performance, but there was a high correlation between their responses to negative events and performance. This outcome suggests that those who accept greater blame for failure are motivated to work harder to achieve. Contains 10 references. (DMG)

Adult volunteers (n=1,215) in Singapore and San Francisco (California) rated the degree of obviousness of 12 findings of process-product research on teaching. Respondents could not always distinguish true findings from opposites. Differences in gender, knowledge about teaching, and cultural background had inconsistent effects on judgments of obviousness. (SLD)

Causal attribution has been found to have a great effect on future performance. Causal attributions were studied across two academic subjects and two outcomes using an open-ended measure. All 180 ninth-graders in a girls' high school in the Bay Area of San Francisco (California) stated their best and worst subjects and provided their perceived causes for doing well or poorly in each subject. A simple questionnaire with six incomplete sentences was administered to the students. A total of 149 students returned the questionnaire. Causal attributions were then analyzed in terms of factors and dimensions. Effort was the most frequently mentioned factor for performance. Ability was the second most frequently named factor, followed by interest, task, and teacher. Although less than 12 students cited luck as a causal factor, all but one student indicated that luck was the reason for good performance in their worst subject. In general, the students attributed performance more to internal factors (effort, ability, and interest) than to external factors (task, teacher, and luck). The findings differ from previous research; the results show a different attribution pattern for success and failure if subject areas are distinguished. One table summarizes the frequencies of causal attributions. (SLD)