HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ATTRIBUTIONS ABOUT SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN

PHYSICS
Zeynep Tuğba Kahyaoğlu
Middle East Technical University
Introduction
Researchers of physics education assert and examine many factors that affect
students’ physics achievement with various research studies. Misconceptions (Clement,
1993), mathematical skills (Champagne, Klopfer & Anderson, 1980), visuo-spatial ability
(Kavaz and Eryılmaz, 2003), problem solving skills(Delialioğlu, 1995), evaluation methods,
curriculum(Brekke, 1994), gender of students (Young, 1991), students’ personal
characteristics and cognitive development, teacher related factors (Korur, 2001), method of
instruction etc. are all examples of these factors affecting physics achievement in standardized
tests or class examinations. However, all these factors affecting physics achievement are
asserted by researchers, not by students self. In other words, the illness is tried to be recovered
just by direct operations without asking the actual symptoms and complaints of patients.
Students are in the actual scene of the game, are in natural settings of physics instruction.
They would probably have experiences, beliefs and ideas about the physics instruction and
achievement. Schwedes (as cited in Laukenmann et al., 2003) warned about physics teaching
that that the fact of students being young people with having kinds of interests, feelings,
desires and experiences is not considered adequately.
Attributions are beliefs about the causes of outcomes and they affect students’
expectations, motivation, and emotions (Weiner, 1979). For physics, task difficulty is a
common accepted attribution about failure by students. Validity of attributions according to
their receptiveness of the real situation becomes not important when their motivational effects
are taken into consideration. Because not the real situation affects one’s affective
characteristics and behaviors, but the believed situation by the individual does. In analysis of
attributions, there are three general dimensions of causal structure: Locus, stability and
controllability. Locus dimensions have two levels: internal versus external. Stability
dimension has two levels: stable versus unstable. And controllability dimension has two
levels: controllable versus uncontrollable. By the combination of these levels eight types of
attribution are derived. Each dimension has different motivational implications and the type of
attribution is very crucial due to these motivational effects on students. For example, a student
who attributes his/her failure to the attribution of “I have no aptitude” with dimensions of
internal, stable, uncontrollable would probably face with reluctance and nondiligence to future
study due to helplessness s/he constitutes. What is more, this may put the student in a vicious
circle of developing negative attitudes towards the lesson and so failure. On the contrary, a
student who attributes his/her failure to the attribution of “I have not study enough” with
dimensions of internal, unstable, controllable would see the importance of effort and so will
be directed to future study.
Asking high school students for their beliefs about the reasons of their achievement and
failure in physics would be meaningful to provide a base for a real working solution. By this
study a picture showing the common attributions about success and failure in high school
physics is tried to be drawn. The purpose of this study was to collect descriptive data from
high school students on attributions about success and failure in high school physics. The
study was conducted to measure levels of each of the attributions as they pertain to which
dimensions according to attribution theory.
Method
The study was conducted with total of 412 students in a governmental high school in
Kocaeli; that is one of the most developed cities of Turkey. 276 were of 9th grade, 90 were of
10th grade and 46 of were 11th grade. Data were collected with a short questionnaire composed
of one short answer item and one open ended question. To make students evaluate their own
perception of success and failure, firstly they were asked whether they think that they were
successful or unsuccessful in physics exam. Then, students were asked to give written
answers to the open ended question of “why do you think that you became successful /
unsuccessful in the first physics examination this midterm?” There were many studies in the
literature searching for the attributions with likert type questionnaires but for this study to get
the actual thoughts of students about their performance and not to direct or effect them, open
ended questions were preferred to collect data. Moreover, to get more number of data, it is
preferred to be collected as written answers.
All students were informed by the researcher that mini survey would be collected and
students were free to write what they actually thought without any reservation such that only
the researcher would see the answers without knowing their names. It takes about ten minutes
for students to fill the questionnaire.

For analysis of attributions, firstly all attributions that students stated were coded
according to three dimensions of locus, stability and controllability and the corresponding
types were determined for each attribution accordingly. Then, frequencies and percentages of
attribution types were derived with SPSS. Any difference between gender groups and
between 9th, 10th and 11th grades students in attributions about success and failure in physics
were searched with chi-square analysis.

Results

Total number of attributions is 980, made by all 412 students. 9th grade students
made attributions for one exam, 10th and 11th grades made attributions for two exams.
In Turkish education system for one semester 9th grades have two exams, but 10, 11
and 12 grades have three exams. Therefore, at the time of data collection 9th grades
had learned one exam results, but 10th and 11th grades had learned two exam results. In
order to get all attributions of students about their success and failure in their grade
level physics all their past exams in that semester was preferred to be asked.

The 980 attributions were analyzed with frequency distribution of their types. Table 1
shows the frequency and percentage distribution of 854 failure attributions done by students
in all 9th, 10th and 11th grade students. The most common failure attribution type was found as
internal-unstable-controllable type with 28.9 percentages. No studying or not enough studying
for the exam are examples of this type. The studying indicated here is not the long term effort
and regular studying. It refers to the studying before the exam in a close time. The only
difference in these two attributions is in the stability dimension. The long term effort is stable
however, short term effort (studying before the exam) is unstable.
The second common failure attribution type was found as external-stable-uncontrollable
type with 18.3 percentages. Noisy classroom atmosphere, not having suitable study place at
home, difficulty of exam subject and questions, abundance of physics formulas, mathematics
in physics, and not understanding the instruction that is identified with the teacher were the
attributions stated by the students for this type. Attributions of this type are not harmful for
students’ perceptions of self and so not take part in their responsibility. The second common
type of failure attribution implies messages to our education programmers and teachers about
the classroom environments, curriculum and instruction.
Table 1
Percentages and frequencies of failure attributions for all grades’ students

Attribution Dimensions Percentage Frequency

type (%)
1 External, stable and controllable 3,3 28
2 External, stable and uncontrollable 18,3 156
3 External, unstable and controllable 0 0
4 External, unstable and uncontrollable 15,8 135
5 Internal, stable and controllable 10,2 87
6 Internal, stable and uncontrollable 12,2 104
7 Internal, unstable and controllable 28,9 247
8 Internal, unstable and uncontrollable 11,4 97
All types Total 100 854

External-unstable-uncontrollable attributions were the third most common types with

percentage of 15.8. The events that had occurred in family or environment of the student
before the examination and that also had affected the student affectively or had limited the
studying facility or events that occurred accidentally during the exam were examples of these
kind. A death or birth in a family, a fight with someone, having not enough time to study for
the physics exam due to overlap of other examinations in closer times, effect of exam type
(classic or test type exams) were the attributions written by the students in this type.
The fourth most common attribution type for failure in physics was ınternal-stable and
uncontrollable type with percentage of 12.2. This type of attribution is the most detrimental
one for motivation and self efficacy beliefs of students (Pintrich and Schunk, 2002) because
students believe in a stable and uncontrollable factor that they have naturally and this might
make students face with learned helplessness. Having no aptitude, high test anxiety, not
loving physics are in that type of attribution.
Internal-unstable-uncontrollable type with percentage of 11.4 is the fifth most common
failure attribution type. The illness on the day of exam, bad mood, carelessness, headache
during the exam, anxiety which is not chronic, forgetting the formulas due to stress or anxiety,
misunderstood of the questions were the examples that students wrote in this type of failure
attributions. The deficiencies in studying habit and habitual laziness are in the internal-stable-
controllable type of failure attributions and were found as in the sixth order of being common
among eight types of attributions with percentage of 10.2.
According to the results of the analysis, the least reported attribution types for failure in
physics was external-stable-controllable type with percentage of 3.3. Teacher’s negative or
positive biases, injustice in grading were examples of external-stable-controllable type. The
external-unstable-controllable type is not found for failure attributions in all grade students.
Not getting help from friends, parents or teachers were the examples of the least reported type
of failure attributions for physics with dimensions external-unstable-controllable.
 Results for success attributions are different than of failure attributions. Table 2 shows
the frequency and percentage distribution of 126 success attributions done by students in all
9th, 10th and 11th grade students.
Table 2
Percentages and frequencies of success attributions for all grades’ students

Attribution Dimensions Percentage Frequency

type (%)
1 External, stable and controllable 1,6 2
2 External, stable and uncontrollable 7,1 9
3 External, unstable and controllable 1,6 2
4 External, unstable and uncontrollable 21,4 27
5 Internal, stable and controllable 19,0 24
6 Internal, stable and uncontrollable 12,7 16
7 Internal, unstable and controllable 32,5 41
8 Internal, unstable and uncontrollable 4 5

Internal-unstable-controllable type is again the most common attribution type for also success.
However, second common attribution type is external-unstable-uncontrollable type for
success and this was different for failure attributions. This means that students attribute more
external and change related factors to their achievement and more external stable factors
(method, class atmosphere etc) to their failure.
Results of the chi square analysis shows that for all grades of students, there is no
significant difference between types of success attributions made by females and males,
however, there is significant difference between types of failure attributions made by females
and males (p= .001< .05). Moreover, chi square analysis revealed that both failure (.000 <.05)
and success attributions types (.005 < .05) are significantly different for 9th, 10th and 11th
grade students.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the finding the most common type of failure and success attribution as
internal-unstable-controllable type indicates that our students see their success in physics is
controllable and mostly depends on studying for exam in short time. This type is not much
detrimental for motivation and self efficacy beliefs of students but for their permanent and
meaningful learning. In Turkey unfortunately students face with many nation wide exams to
enter better schools during their all education. University entrance examination is the most
obvious one. Therefore students are more performance oriented for success. They seek more
for better grades than permanent learning.

The second most common type of failure attributions implies to our education
programmers and teachers about the classroom environments, curriculum and instruction.
Students reported that doing not enough experiments could be a source of their failure in
physics. Alternative and new methods of instruction may be useful to help our students
understanding the lesson. Curriculum of physics lesson may need to be revised according to
the mathematics level used in physics. Some students reported mathematics and geometry in
physics as a source of their failure. In fact this finding is suitable with the previous studies
that reports mathematics in physics as one of the major factors affecting students’
achievement in some various subjects of physics (Champagne, Leopold & Anderson, 1980;
Cohen, Hillman & Agne as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995; Griffith; Peltzer as cited in Delialioğlu,
1995). Third most common failure attributions were mostly about exam types. Most of the
students complaining about test type exams which lowers their success because they can not
get partial points for their incomplete right solutions.

The fourth most common failure attribution type (internal-stable-uncontrollable type) is

the most detrimental one for motivation and self efficacy beliefs of students. Fortunately this
type is not found as most common but is still in the fourth order, which indicates that those
students do not like physics and see their selves as having no or less aptitude for it. Therefore,
to remediate this belief, physics self efficacy beliefs of our students need to be raised by
educators. Self efficacy refers to personal beliefs about one’ capabilities to learn or perform
skills at designated levels (Bandura, 1986) and attributions and perceptions of self efficacy
are related (Schunk, 1994). Self efficacy beliefs of students are important because it is
significantly and positively related to future performance (Bandura, 1997).

In Turkey, teachers were put in a situation that they must skip the story of the events
fast and solve more and more problems especially ones that are similar to asked ones in
University Entrance Exam. Students were also caring for the UEE and not for learning
science. Their attributions for failure and success in physics may probably root from their
need of getting good grades in exams. Moreover, providing Turkish students with better
motivation and attitudes on physics is one of the most important points for training
innovations making scientist, engineers, doctors etc. Therefore, working on developing a
suitable physics curriculum which have characteristics of giving importance on building
scientific way of thought on students, awaking interest and positive attitudes on sciences and
being suitable for effective instruction with conceptual understanding for Turkish students is a
duty of our researchers.
Future studies would search for the attributions of students from different socio
economic status and from different regions in Turkey. Students would be interviewed by in
depth interviews or by focus group interviews to get deeper information about their beliefs
about success and failure in physics. Moreover, because teachers can have different
attributions from students, physics teachers’ perspectives on the same subject would be
considered by asking their beliefs about their students’ success and failure in physics. By this
way the event can be seen from the instructors’ view.
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