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...causal attributions, level of education, and parenting styles in the middle of the preschool year and during Grades I and 2. The children's performance in reading and mathematics was tested at the beginning of the preschool year. The results showed that, while the children were in preschool, parents attributed their children's success to ability and teaching. When the children moved to primary school, parents increasingly attributed their children's success to ability, whereas they typically attributed failure to lack of effort. Furthermore, the higher the level of performance the children showed, the more the parents attributed their children's success to ability and the less they attributed it to teaching.
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Although a substantial amount of research has been carried out on the kinds of the attributions parents form about their children's behavior (Bolton et al., 2003: Chavira. Lopez, Blacher. & Shapiro, 2000: A. Miller, Ferguson, & Moore, 2002) and on the role of parental causal attributions in children's academic achievement (Dunton, McDevitt, & Hess. 1988: Kinlaw, Kurtz-Costes, & Goldman-Fraser, 2001: S. A. Miller, 1995), little is known about how parental attributions come about. In particular, little investigation has been carried out on the role of parent-related factors, such as education and parenting styles, in the formation of mothers' and fathers' causal attributions. The aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which parents' causal attributions concerning their children's school achievement change during children's transition from preschool to primary school, as well as the extent to which parents' level of education, parenting styles, and gender contribute to these causal attributions over and above child-related factors, such as the child's school achievement and gender.
Parental Causal Attributions
The attributional theory of achievement motivation (Weiner, 1985, 1986) has expanded in recent years to encompass the ways in which parents explain and evaluate their children's academic behavior. According to this theory, parents usually attribute their children's achievement (success and failure) to specific causes, such as ability, effort, teaching, and task difficulty (Cashmore & Goodnow, 1986; Yee & Eccles, 1988). These causal attributions vary along three dimensions: locus of control (internal versus external), stability, and controllability (Weiner, 1986). For any individual, for example, ability is an internal, stable, and uncontrollable factor; effort is an internal, unstable, and controllable factor; and teaching and task difficulty are external, stable, and uncontrollable properties (Weiner, 1986).
Previous research suggests that parents typically employ "self-protective bias" (Dix & Grusec, 1985; Himelstein, Graham, & Weiner, 1991; S. A. Miller, Manhal, & Mee, 1991) when they attribute their children's school achievement to a cause; that is, they typically give their children the credit for success but avoid blaming them for failure. A similar pattern has also been described as "developmental optimism" (Coplan, Hastings, Lagace-Seguin, & Moulton, 2002: Goodnow, Knight, & Cashmore, 1986). However, some studies have obtained rather different results. For example, Yee and Eccles (1988) found that parents most typically attribute their children's failure to lack of effort, which emphasizes the child's responsibility for the outcome and also has consequences for his or her future behavior at school.
Previous research on parental causal attributions has at least four limitations. First, only a few studies have been carried out on the development of parental causal attributions; consequently, little is known about how parents' causal attributions change across time. Second, most studies have examined older children (Cashmore & Goodnow, 1986; Georgiou, 1999), although it might be assumed that parents' causal attributions concerning their children's school performance evolve during the first school years. Third, only a few studies have focused simultaneously on both mothers' and fathers' causal attributions. Fourth, most of the recent research on parental attributions has focused on clinical samples (Dadds, Mullins, McAllister, & Atkinson, 2003; White & Barrowclough, 1998) or on children's problem behavior (Bolton et al., 2003: Johnston, Reynolds, Freeman, & Geller, 1998). Less is known about the normal development of parental causal attributions, particularly in the domain of children's school achievement.
Consequently, the first aim of this study was to examine the causes to which mothers and fathers attribute the academic successes and failures of their children during the preschool year, as well as how these causal attributions change when the child moves to Grade 1 and Grade 2. Two alternative hypotheses were tested. The first posited that parents use self-protective bias in their causal attributions. As the alternative hypothesis we proposed that parents refer frequently to lack of effort after a child's failure, which might be thought to have consequences for the child's future behavior. Because few studies have examine simultaneously the causal attributions of both parents, one additional aim of the study was to examine the extent to which mothers and fathers share or differ in their causal attributions concerning the school achievement of their children.
Child-Related Factors in Parental Causal Attributions
Despite the considerable research can-led out on the kinds of causal attributions parents evince (Dunton et al., 1988; Georgiou, 1999: A. Miller et al., 2002), less is known about the factors that influence these attributions. The few studies carried out have typically concerned the child-related antecedents of parents' causal attributions, such as the child's gender and achievement. It has been shown, for example, that parents' success attributions differ depending on the child's gender: mothers typically attribute their sons" success to ability, whereas they attribute their daughters' success to effort, particularly in mathematics (Dunton et al., 1988; Eccles, Jacobs, & Harold, 1990: Holloway & Hess, 1985: Raty, Vanska, Kasanen, & Karkkanen, 2002: Yee & Eccles, 1988). It has been further suggested that such differences are due to parents' gender stereotypes (Dunton et al., 1988; Eccles et al., 1990; Fincham, Beach, Arias, & Brody, 1998). It has also been shown that mothers' thinking is more dependent on gender stereotypes, whereas fathers rely more on children's school achievement (Frome & Eccles, 1998). Not all studies, however, have found such gender differences. Cashmore and Goodnow (1986), for example, found that both parents attributed success on the part of their daughters and sons alike to their abilities.
It has also been shown that children's past performance at school is one of the major antecedents of parents' causal attributions: the higher the level of the child's past performance, the more frequently mothers attribute the child's success to ability and attribute failure to lack of effort (Holloway & Hess, 1985). However, most of the studies in the field have focused on mathematical skills (S. A. Miller, 1995), although children's literacy skills might be assumed to play an equally important role in parents' causal attributions, particularly when children move from preschool to primary school and learning to read and write becomes one of the major educational goals. Consequently, one aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which certain characteristics of the child, such as gender and previous levels of reading and mathematics performance, would predict parental causal attributions.
Parent-Related Factors in Parental Causal Attributions
Only a few studies have examined the role of various parent-related factors in how mothers' and fathers' causal attributions concerning their children's school achievement come about. Parents' beliefs and attitudes on the topic of child rearing are one factor that may contribute to parental causal attributions. Such parenting beliefs have typically been described in terms of parenting styles (Coplan et al., 2002), which refer to a constellation of attitudes that create an emotional climate in which parents' behaviors are expressed (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Parenting styles have usually been investigated according to three dimensions: affect, behavioral control, and psychological control. Affect refers to emotional support and warmth (Darling & Steinberg, 1993), behavioral control to the behaviors with which parents seek to control their children's activities (Barber, 1996), and psychological control to the ways in which parents attempt to control their children's psychological and emotional development (Barber, 1996). However, only a few studies have sought to link parenting styles with parental causal attributions. In one such recent study, Coplan et al. (2002) found that authoritarian mothers (low in warmth but high in behavioral control) tended to attribute their children's positive behavior to external causes and negative behavior to internal causes to a greater extent than authoritative mothers did. However, the focus of that study was children's social behavior rather than their school achievement.
Another parental characteristic that may contribute to parents' causal attributions concerning their children's academic achievement is level of education. It has been found previously, although not in the context of parenting, that level of education and field of study affect individuals' causal attributions (Guimond, Begin, & Palmer, 1989). For example, social science students attributed the causes of poverty and unemployment to more external reasons than did students in other fields or persons with a lower level of education (Guimond et al., 1989). However, no previous studies have examined the impact of parents' level of education on the kinds of causal attributions they show concerning their children's academic success.
Consequently, the final aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which certain parental characteristics, such as gender, level of education, and parenting styles, predict their causal attributions concerning their children's school achievement. Additionally, we examined whether characteristics shared by both parents or the characteristics of individual mothers and fathers would have the greater influence on their causal attributions.
In the present study, multilevel latent growth modeling (MLGM) was used to examine the research questions. MLGM combines two more frequently used statistical methods. The latent growth modeling part of this analysis was used in the present study to estimate the initial level and the linear and quadratic growth components of a particular type of parents' causal attributions across the three measurements. The multilevel (hierarchical) part of the MLGM analysis differentiated the variance of these components concerning a particular...
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