High-school teachers’ beliefs about effort and their attitudes toward struggling and smart students in a Confucian society

Frontiers in Psychology

Bih-Jen Fwu¹  Hsiou-Huai Wang¹  Shun-Wen Chen²  Chih-Fen Wei³ 

[1] National Taiwan University;National Tsing-Hua University;University of Taipei;

关键词: Confucian culture;    Education in East Asia;    beliefs about effort;    role obligation;    Implicit theory of intellegence;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01366

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Previous studies conducted in Western societies showed that instructors’ beliefs about intellectual ability affected their attitudes toward students. However, in many East Asian societies influenced by Confucian culture, teachers not only hold beliefs of ability but also two kinds of beliefs about effort: obligation-oriented belief (i.e., believing that effort-making is a student’s role obligation) and improvement-oriented belief (i.e., believing that effort can conquer the limitations of one’s ability). This study aimed to investigate the relationships between teachers’ effort beliefs and their attitudes toward favoritism, praise, and expectations toward struggling and smart students. The participants were 151 Taiwanese high-school teachers. Results of Structure Equation Modeling showed that (1) teachers’ obligation-oriented belief about effort was positively correlated with their favoritism, praise, short-term and long-term expectations of struggling students, but negatively correlated with their favoritism and praise of smart students, (2) teachers’ improvement-orientated belief about effort was negatively correlated with their short-term expectation of smart students and favoritism of struggling students, but positively correlated with their praise of smart students, and (3) the entity theory of intelligence was negatively correlated with favoritism and praise of struggling students, but positively correlated with favoritism of smart students. The theoretical and cultural implications are discussed.

【 授权许可】

Unknown