John G. Nicholls

Reasoning about the ability of self and others: A developmental study.

NICHOLLS, JOHN G., and MILLER, ARDEN T. Reasoning about the Ability of Self and Others: A Developmental Study. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1990-1999. Studies of the development of childrens reasoning about ability have generally focused on reasoning about filmed or described others. But only inferences about ones own ability are likely to serve a behavioral-regulation function. Accordingly, we compared childrens reasoning about the relative ability of themselves and a comparison other (who applied either more or less effort than them) with their reasoning about the relative ability of two others (who differed in effort). Indexes of reasoning were responses to specific questions (e.g, ability judgments) and responses to the whole of a Piagetian-type interview. Structural analysis of responses to the whole interview revealed similar developmental levels of reasoning about two others and about the self and a comparison other. However, conditions involving the self produced more specific judgments of equal ability than did conditions involving two others. Selfconditions also produced more denial of low effort when children themselves had been induced to apply lower effort than when a comparison other applied lower effort. Ability judgments were less mature at the beginning than at the end of the interview. These and other data indicate that specific judgment methods may be more sensitive to situationally induced motivational influences than is the Piagetian method. The latter produces more stable results and may better tap abstract ability-related structures that children apply to themselves as well as to others in achievement situations.

Reducing effort to protect perceived ability: they'd do it but I wouldn't

Researchers have proposed that when students expect a failure that will indicate their incompetence, they intentionally reduce effort so that failure can be attributed to low effort, rather than low ability. Impaired performance has been found when students anticipate feedback that would indicate incompetence, but there is not clear evidence that the impairment results from a calculated reduction in effort. It was hypothesized that this self-protective mechanism makes better sense to observers than to people in a position to use it

Intellectual Conventions Versus Matters of Substance: Elementary School Students as Curriculum Theorists

Elementary school students were interviewed about substantive and conventional aspects of academic knowledge They considered the learning of intellectual conventions (spelling and methods of representing addition) less important than matters of substance (mathematical logic or facts about nature). They also viewed didactic teaching as more appropriate for matters of convention than for matters of logic and fact. These results support the theses that even young students (a) distinguish intellectual conventions from the substance of disciplines and (b) construe intellectual conventions as arbitrary (rather than logically or empirically necessary) social practices that foster communication about matters of substance. We suggest that this distinction might be accorded more attention, for example, in research on the effect of teaching practices on student motivation.