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?