Attributional Retraining: reducing the likelihood of failure

Abstract

Failing a course is an acutely negative event for first-year university students, and a major contributor to high attrition rates at North American universities. Despite its prevalence, course failure receives relatively little research attention. What can be done to reduce course failure and help first-year students remain in university? This study examined the efficacy of an Attributional Retraining treatment intervention to reduce course failure in an Introductory Psychology course. Attributional Retraining is designed to restructure students' causal explanations of poor performance by encouraging controllable attributions such as effort and strategy in place of immutable causes such as academic ability or intelligence. Relative to students in the control group, first-year students who received Attributional Retraining were less likely to fail the Introductory Psychology course (14.6% vs. 6.4%). This finding emerged beyond the effects of several well-established predictors of academic outcomes including student background characteristics (i.e., age, gender, and past academic performance) and learning environment variables (student registration status and participation in a first-year orientation program), suggesting the utility of Attributional Retraining for students with varying backgrounds and in different educational contexts. To the extent that Attributional Retraining is effective, inexpensive, and relatively easy to 123 76 T. L. Haynes Stewart et al.administer, it may be a viable option for inclusion in orientation programs designed to reduce course failure and attrition among first-year university students.

Is perceived control a critical factor in understanding the negative relationship between cognitive test anxiety and examination performance?

“…Thus, interventions that aim to reduce test anxiety and improve performance, rather than those that solely to reduce test anxiety, need to focus on both reducing worry and increasing perceived control. Attributional retraining is a form of intervention designed to encourage control attributions over the perceived causes of success or failure (e.g., Hall, Perry, Goetz, Ruthig, Stupnisky, & Newall, 2007;Stewart, Clifton, Daniels, Perry, Chipperfield, & Ruthig, 2011). It is possible that attributional retraining could be used in tandem with cognitive and behavioral approaches to test anxiety in intervention in order to both reduce worry and improve performance.…”

Assisting failure‐prone individuals to navigate achievement transitions using a cognitive motivation treatment (attributional retraining)

“…Additionally, students who receive AR have outperformed their no‐AR peers in terms of test scores (Perry, Stupnisky, Hall, Chipperfield, & Weiner, ), final grades in a two‐semester course (Hall, Perry, Chipperfield, Clifton, & Haynes, ), and first‐year grade point average (GPA; Haynes et al., , ). Furthermore, students who receive AR drop fewer courses throughout the academic year (Ruthig, Perry, Hall, & Hladkyj, ) and are less likely to fail a two‐semester course when compared with their no‐AR counterparts (Haynes Stewart et al., ). In many of these studies, findings have demonstrated that the effects of AR are often more pronounced among certain types of students as manifested in an aptitude by treatment interaction pattern of results (Haynes et al., ).…”

As Atribuições de Causalidade no Ensino Fundamental: Relações com Variáveis Demográficas e Escolares

“…Esses programas atuam nas dimensões da causa, por exemplo, alterando as explicações de fracasso vistas como incontroláveis para controláveis e as externas para internas. Pesquisas mostram que os programas de retreinamento das atribuições de causalidade são promissores em desenvolver no aluno, crenças compatíveis com a motivação para a aprendizagem, maior persistência e consciência de que os eventos podem ser alterados pelo sujeito (Bzuneck & Sales, 2011;Martini & Boruchovitch, 2004;Martini & Del Prette, 2005;Perry, Chipperfield, Hladkyj, Pekrun & Hamm, 2014;Stewart, Clifton, Daniels, Perry, Chipperfield, & Ruthig, 2011).…”