Perceived (academic) control and causal thinking in achievement settings

Canadian Psychology, Nov 2003 by Perry, Raymond P

CPA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology (2001) Prix de la SCP pour contributions remarquables a l'enseignement et a la formation en psychologie (2001)

Abstract

Striving to excel is a goal commonly shared by undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members in academic achievement settings. Periodically, however, their sense of personal control and mastery is undermined by low-control experiences arising from a greater emphasis on success and failure, heightened academic competition, increased pressure to excel, more frequent academic failures, unfamiliar academic tasks, new social networks, and critical career choices. In these situations, achievement-striving can lead to a paradox of failure in which seemingly bright, enthusiastic individuals fail in their quest, unable to fulfill the demand to augment self-initiative and independence. Many otherwise capable individuals quit during the transition from high school to college, college to graduate school, or graduate school to academic jobs. This article focuses on perceived personal control as an academic marker and on its use as a control-enhancing intervention for redressing failure, based on laboratory and longitudinal field studies conducted at the University of Manitoba during the last two decades.

What began as my first attempt to teach Introductory Psychology, without the benefit of any formal training in pedagogy, has developed into a 30-year exploration of human motivation and performance. The ensuing quest into how to be a more effective instructor was precipitated by feelings of inadequacy about my teaching and by disappointing student ratings - no small concern for a freshly minted assistant professor! But these initial worries had notable payoffs for my teaching, and in the process, they spawned a deep interest in how human beings learn and in how teaching and learning processes unfold in the classroom. The direct result was the development of a research program on effective college teaching that, in turn, evolved into a complementary research program on human motivation and performance (Perry, 1985, 1991; Perry & Williams, 1979). Thus, it is an honour, both personally and professionally, to receive the CPA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Education and Training.

When my academic career began in the early '70s, there was no commitment to developing teaching skills as part of a graduate education in psychology and little information or resources available to assist a struggling new professor to master the craft of teaching (Perry, 1990a; Perry & Smart, 1997a). As a social scientist, my recourse was to consult the research literature on effective college teaching in an attempt to find practical solutions to my own difficulties. Not surprisingly, the basic research literature at the time was, and still is, largely inaccessible to faculty members -except perhaps those with a methodology background in the social sciences. Happily, the scientific literature had a profound impact on my understanding of pedagogy and provided me with some basic guidelines that have served me well throughout my career: Be expert on the material; be organized in presenting it; and, be enthusiastic about it. In response to this inaccessibility of the basic research on college teaching, I edited several volumes bringing together the top researchers in the field in an attempt to make such information more readily available to instructors, administrators, and researchers alike (Perry, 1990b; Perry & Smart, 1997b).

Three Critical Issues Concerning Teaching and Learning

Survival matters aside, the issues I struggled with as a novice instructor recur throughout the academic careers of university professors (e.g., Perry, Menec, & Struthers, 1999). As an assistant professor prepares to teach an introductory course for the first time, or a senior full professor contemplates tomorrow's upcoming graduate seminar, questions arise about student motivation, learning, and performance, and about how these relate to different instructional methods. Although such questions are myriad, three issues are at the heart of most teaching and learning matters, largely related to student characteristics, teaching methods, and student failure. These same three issues that preoccupy professors throughout their academic careers are also of critical importance to students, postsecondary institutions, and researchers alike (Menges & Associates, 1999). The remainder of this section explores these three issues as they pertain to various education stakeholders.

Student characteristics

The issue of student characteristics, hereafter referred to as academic markers, concerns how certain attributes of students relate to achievement motivation and performance. Of interest to faculty members is the effect of individual differences between students, such as intelligence, educational background, or socioeconomic status, on students' academic development, specifically, and on the classroom climate, more generally. For college students themselves, this question surfaces in an over-riding preoccupation with how personal attributes influence scholastic attainment. Questions such as, "Am I smart enough?" "Can I hang in there long enough?" and so on, reflect students' worries about how their own qualifications affect their performance in comparison to other students, or to some absolute standard. Not surprisingly, academic markers are of interest to postsecondary institutions as predictors of success, as seen in various institutional policies on admissions and academic standards, support programs for new students, commonly referred to as The First Year Experience, and access programs targeted to selected minority groups.