Developmental, gender, and academic domain differences in causal attributions and the influence of attributions on classroom engagement were explored longitudinally in 115 African American adolescents. In Grades 8 and 11, adolescents reported attributions for success and failure in math, English and writing, and science. In Grade 11, English and mathematics teachers rated students’ classroom engagement. Boys were more likely than girls to attribute math successes to high ability and to attribute English failures to low ability. Both genders’ ability attributions for math became more negative from eighth to eleventh grade. Grade 8 attributions of math failure to lack of ability were negatively related to Grade 11 math classroom engagement. Results illustrate the gendered nature of motivational beliefs among Black youth.

In this chapter, the term Whites refers only to non-Hispanic European Americans. 2 Large variability is found within each of these groups, linked to English language proficiency, socioeconomic status, and subgroup national origin. For example, Japanese Americans score higher on achievement measures than Vietnamese Americans, and Cuban Americans score higher than Mexican Americans. Unfortunately, most researchers do not distinguish among ethnic subgroups. Where such information is available, we report the ethnicity of samples.

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