Beliefs and Learned Helplessness Sam Johnson Taylor Bednarek

Discussion Question #1: What do you think of when you hear the term learned helplessness? Can you give us an example from your personal experiences?

Epistemological Beliefs Beliefs about structure, stability, certainty of knowledge, and how knowledge is best learned

Beliefs About Ability Entity View of Ability: belief that ability is a fixed characteristic that cannot be changed Incremental View of Ability: Belief that ability is a set of skills that can be changed

Entity Views:Incremental Views: Students with this view: Tend to avoid setting goals in order to not look bad to others Students with this view: Tend to have greater motivation and focus on the process instead of the outcome Teachers with this view: Quicker to form judgements about their students and slower to modify their opinions Teachers with this view: Set mastery goals for their students where students can improve their skills

Attribution Theory Descriptions of how individuals' explanations justifications, and excuses influence their motivation and behavior

Bernard Weiner Locus - location of the cause (internal or external) Stability - the cause of the events is the same across time and environment Controllability - whether the person can control the cause Main educational psychologist responsible for relating the attribution theory to school learning

Attributions in the Classroom people with strong sense of self-efficacy for a given task tend to attribute their failures to lack of effort, misunderstanding directions, or just not studying enough greatest motivational problems arise when students attribute failures to stable, uncontrollable causes

Learned Helplessness o the expectation, based on previous experiences with a lack of control, that all one’s efforts will lead to failure

Beliefs About Self Worth Mastery Oriented: Students who focus on learning goals because they value achievement and see ability as improvable Failure- Avoiding Students: Students who avoid failure by sticking to what they know, by not taking risks, or by claiming not to care about their performance Failure- Accepting Students: Students who believe their failures are due to low ability and there is little they can do about it

Warning for Future Teachers: Self- Handicapping: Students may engage in behavior that blocks their own success in order to avoid testing their true ability Teachers who stress performance, grades and competition can encourage self-handicapping without realizing they are doing so

Discussion Question #2: What do can you do as a future educator to keep your students from developing negative beliefs about their own learning?