Greenway, Carol Elizabeth;
(2003)
Teachers' beliefs about the matter in which children learn and how they can be helped to learn.
Doctoral thesis (D.Ed.Psy), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The aim of this study was to try and establish whether achievement level (low, average or high), gender, SEN stage and EAL level influenced teachers' attributions of, and strategy use with, junior age pupils in the inner city primary school. Teachers' beliefs about the causes of pupils' academic success and failure were investigated within three research traditions: attribution research, research using Personal Construct methodology and research into teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. The pilot study involved a construct and strategy elicitation exercise from which a questionnaire was designed to enable teachers to rate children on bipolar attributions and rate the frequency of their strategy use. Five research questions were explored. The first connected previous research to this study and investigated how much of the variance in attribution scores could be explained by ability and effort factors. 60% of the variance could be explained by these factors and within this figure, 37.7% by ability and 22.8% by effort. This supports previous research in this area. Further research questions explored the effects of the independent variables on teachers' attributions and their strategy use. Low achievers, boys and students at school action plus had consistent and significant ratings at the negative end of the majority of the bipolar attributions. A factor analysis of strategy use threw up the three factors of ability, immediate effort, and motivation or typical effort strategies. A multivariate analysis of variance distinguished significantly between achievement levels and on all three factors, between genders on immediate effort strategies, between the stages of SEN on ability and immediate effort strategies, and between EAL stages on ability strategies. It was concluded that this questionnaire, with modifications, could be a very useful tool for the educational psychologist assessing teachers' attributions of and strategy use with individual children.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | D.Ed.Psy |
| Title: | Teachers' beliefs about the matter in which children learn and how they can be helped to learn |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Thesis digitised by ProQuest. |
| Keywords: | Education; Student achievement |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10099774 |
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