Attribution-based motivation treatment efficacy in an online learning environment for students who differ in cognitive elaboration

Attribution-based motivation treatments can boost performance in competitive achievement settings (Perry and Hamm 2017), yet their efficacy relative to mediating processes and affect-based treatments remains largely unexamined. In a two-semester, pre-post, randomized treatment study (n = 806), attributional retraining (AR) and stress-reduction (SR) treatments were administered in an online learning environment to first-year college students who differed in cognitive elaboration (low, high). Low elaborators who received AR outperformed their SR peers by nearly a letter grade on a class test assessed 5 months post-treatment. Path analysis revealed this AR-performance linkage was mediated by causal attributions, perceived control, and positive and negative achievement emotions in a hypothesized causal sequence. Results advance the literature by showing AR (vs. SR) improved performance indirectly via cognitive and affective process variables specified by Weiner’s (1985a, 2012) attribution theory of motivation and emotion

Emotions and motivation in mathematics education: theoretical considerations and empirical contributions

Emotions and motivation are important prereq-uisites, mediators, and outcomes of learning and achieve-ment. In this article, we first review major theoretical approaches and empirical findings in research on students\u27 emotions and motivation in mathematics, including a dis-cussion of how classroom instruction can support emo-tions and motivation. Based on this review, we encourage researchers from mathematics education and other dis-ciplines of educational research to combine their efforts. Second, we provide an overview of the contributions in this special issue, most of which reflect such a combination of efforts by considering perspectives from both mathematics education and other fields of educational research. Finally, we consider the neglect of intervention studies and outline directions for future research. We identify intervention studies that target emotions and motivation as one promis-ing but so far underrepresented line of research in mathe-matics education and review results from existing interven-tion studies. For future research, we suggest that researchers should implement fine-grained concepts, assessment instru-ments, theoretical hypotheses, and methods of analysis tai-lored to the specific features of the mathematical domain to adequately investigate students\u27 emotions and motivation in this domain