The Formation and Role of Self Perceptions of Ability in Elementary Classrooms

The Elementary School Journal Volume 82, Number 5 o 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 00 13-5984/82/82 05-0003$0 1.00 In an effort to understand better the factors influencing children's performance in school, the relation of ability perceptions to academic achievement has been a topic of concern for many investigators (e.g., Bar-Tal 1978; Covington and Omelich 1979a, 1979b; Weiner 1979; Parsons, in press). Their formulations have been guided by attribution theory (i.e., Weiner et al. 1971), which proposes that an individual's interpretation of the causes of success and failure influences future achievement-oriented behavior. One of the most consistent findings in this tradition is that, if individuals believe that their successful completion of tasks is due to their own abilities, then they will be likely to attempt similar endeavors in the future because they expect to do well and feel good about their accomplishments. They will be less likely to do so if they believe achievement is due to other factors, like luck or ease of assignment. Consequently, this theory postulates that ability perceptions mediate achievement behavior. While there is a great deal of theory and research to support this view (see Weiner [1980] for a review), much of it results from studies using adult subjects in a laboratory setting. Several features of the work may limit the applicability of findings based on this approach to the classroom. First, there are developmental differences in children's cognitive capabilities that influence the formation and operation of ability perceptions. Second, in the natural context of the classroom the ecological validity of experimental results is questionable because the genesis and effect of perceptions may be quite different outside the