Motivation: Cultural Influences & Attribution Theory EDU 330: Educational Psychology Daniel Moos, PhD

Motivation: Cultural Differences (I) Anglo-American children More interested when allowed to make a personal choice in learning (Iyenggar & Lepp, 1999) Asian children More motivated when trusted others (authority figures/peers) make choice for them (Iyenggar & Lepp, 1999) Chinese children More motivated when do schoolwork in order to please parents and teachers (in contrast to Western students engage in self-handicapping & other maladaptive outcomes (Cheng & Lam, 2013)

Motivation: Cultural Differences (II) Pursuit of avoidant goals Negative predictor of well-being in US (individualistic culture) Non (or even Positive) predictor for South Koreans and Russians (collectivist culture; Elliot et al. 2001) Western theorists of motivation argue that higher the self concept, higher the academic achievement (Schunk & Pajares, 2009) East Asian students tend to have lower ability beliefs, but higher academic performance than Western students (Stevenson et al. 1990) Western students who have higher opinion of abilities typically do worse on international comparative achievement tests compared to Asian students (Kaiser at al. 2002)

Attribution Theory: Introduction (II) How do individuals typically attribute their success and/or failure? Interpret successes and failures in a manner that is most likely to maintain positive self-image Success/Failure Success Failure Controllable Uncontrollable Internal Effort Luck Difficulty of Test Choice of Study Environments External

Attribution Theory: Strategies “I am competent” AND “I worked hard” NOT beneficial to completely attribute to ability (2) Students most likely to persist after failing if they attribute failure to a lack of appropriate effort (3) Scaffold student’s understanding of effort Students often confuse spending time doing ineffective activities with effort Students often have incorrect conceptions of their understanding (metacognition) (4) Should assessment include evaluations of effort?