Their Children ́s Academic Achievement Parents ́Causal Attributions Concerning Parents ́Causal Attributions Concerning Their Children ́s Academic Achievement

Natale, Katja Parents’ Causal Attributions Concerning Their Children’s Academic Achievement Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2007, 54 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 309) ISBN 978-951-39-2900-8 (PDF), 978-951-39-2883-4 (nid.) Diss. This thesis investigated how mothers’ and fathers’ causal attributions concerning their children’s academic achievement evolve during their children’s transition from kindergarten to the first grades of primary school, and the antecedents and consequences of these causal attributions. Two different data sets were used. The first data set reported here is part of the Jyväskylä Entrance into Primary School study (Nurmi & Aunola, 1999), in which 207 children and their parents were followed up for three years during the children’s transition from kindergarten to primary school. Parents completed a questionnaire concerning their causal attributions in the middle of each school year. Information about children’s academic performance and selfconcept of ability was gathered at the beginning and at the end of each school year. The second data set reported here is part of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD) (Lyytinen et al., 2004) in which 189 children and their mothers participated. Mothers’ were asked for their causal attributions on three occasions during the children’s first school year. Children’s pre-reading skills were examined prior to school entry. The results showed that mothers and fathers typically attributed their children’s academic success to ability and their failure to effort. However, when the children had a risk for learning difficulties (dyslexia), mothers attributed their success decreasingly to ability during the child’s first school year. The children’s mothers and fathers typically shared their causal attributions, and changes in attributions, when they occurred, were also shared by both parents. The results showed further that the higher the level of performance children showed at school, the more their parents attributed their success to ability and the less to effort. Continuously, the more the parents attributed their children’s success to ability, the higher the performance the children showed later on, and the more realistic their self-concept of ability became. Attributing children’s success to effort, in turn, led to over-optimism in children’s self-concept of ability.