Attribute Theory and Motivation

by Chick Moorman

Students are "at-risk" if they are likely to fail at school or in life. At-risk students are less likely to complete assignments, fail to attend class regularly, fail to build positive relationships, and fail to steer clear of self-defeating behaviors. At-risk students fail to find meaning in school work, fail to ask for help, and fail to see the connections among effort, success, and failure. That's where attribute theory comes in.

Attribute theory, as taught in the PLS course, Successful Teaching for Acceptance of Responsibility™, aims to help students link their successes and failures to their own efforts. Attributions are the reasons one believes are responsible for achieving success or experiencing failure. Today's attributions affect the future actions and expectations of students.

Lack of ability, luck, not enough effort, and difficulty of the task, are the attributions most often given by students when they fail.

Attributions can be characterized as internal or external and stable or unstable. The depiction of internal/external has to do with the students' belief about what caused the success or failure. They can believe it was something inside of them that created the success or they can believe it was some outside factor. Stable/unstable has to do with a student's pattern of failure and it's degree of consistency.

If Jason bombs a spelling test and has done so frequently, the attributions he assigns to that failure may well be internal/stable. He holds himself responsible (internal) and believes he will never be able to spell well (stable). When working with students like Jason, it is not enough to have them experience success. They may attribute that success to luck or an accident. If so, they will not expect success in the future.

External is luck, circumstance, magic: "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," or "The teacher didn't ask the right questions on the test." With an external attribution the result is attributed to something outside of one's self.

Unstable means changing. Thus the attribute would not be my intelligence since that is relatively fixed. I attribute my success to my mood that day since that changes frequently. Arranging your classroom so that students experience success is an important first step. This means setting it up so that something happens, organizing it, designing it as in setting it up so that kids can win, not that they will win because some choose not to, but arranging it so they can win.

Another, more important step, occurs when a student realizes she or he personally contributed to that success. Students must see the cause and effect connection between their behavior and the outcome of a success in order to experience the maximum benefit of it.

One strategy taught in the Successful Teaching for Acceptance of Responsibility™, is the use of skillfully designed "Teacher Talk" to help students link effort, strategies, and ability with results.

Some Examples:

• "Madison, this is your highest test score. I guess that extra practice had an effect."
• "Latrell, that final revision put you over the top. It shows you really have learned to write in complete sentences."
• "Pablo, your test score went up again. Using note cards seems to work for you as a study aid."
• "Brenda, choosing not to complete the make-up assignments hurt your grade this time."
• "I see your handwriting is becoming more legible. To what do you attribute that?"

Often students don't know why they failed or succeeded. When we use Teacher Talk to give performance feedback that helps students link results with effort, strategy, or ability, we help them take responsibility in the present and raise expectations for the future.

Source: Chick Moorman is the designer of PLS courses, Successful Teaching For Acceptance of Responsibility™ and Achieving Student Outcomes Through Cooperative Learning™ and the author of Spirit Whisperers: Teachers Who Nourish A Child's Spirit. Contact him through his web site (insert link to: http://www.chickmoorman.com). Call PLS at 800-526-4630 for information on either course.