Margaret M. Clifford

Thoughts on a theory of constructive failure

Failure is defined and distinguished from concepts such as learned helplessness, low normative feedback and low absolute feedback. The anti‐failure trend characterizing educational practices and programs of recent decades is examined in light of empirical evidence — some of which offers support for this trend and some of which poses a serious challenge to this trend. Finally, a set of factors predicted to be determinants of the facilitative and debilitating effects of failure is presented.

Responses to Failure as Influenced by Task Attribution, Outcome Attribution, and Failure Tolerance

AbstractThe effects of two levels of task attribution (self-selected and other-imposed) and three levels of outcome attribution (ability, strategy, and effort) were examined with the use of a situational description about “Greg,” a Navy recruit who received an unsatisfactory mid-term training report. Navy recruits in their final 2 weeks of military training served as subjects. They were asked to predict, under one of six experimental conditions, the feelings and behavior of Greg as well as the support he was likely to receive from fellow recruits and commanding officers. A measure of failure tolerance was also administered to subjects. Outcome attribution was found to be a more powerful determinant of responses to failure than was task attribution. Consistent with previous findings, these data suggest that strategy attributions generally lead to more constructive responses to failure than do effort and ability attributions. However, this pattern of findings is evidenced only under the self-selected task a...

Academic Risk-Taking: Developmental and Cross-Cultural Observations

AbstractTwo field observation studies conducted with American and Chinese students, aged 8 to 11, were used to examine developmental and cultural patterns in academic risk-taking (i.e., student selection of academic achievement tasks varying in difficulty) and to formulate hypotheses pertinent to this phenomenon. Data led to the following tentative conclusions: (a) Sex differences in academic risk-taking and failure tolerance are trivial. (b) Failure tolerance decreases with development. (c) Academic risk-taking is low relative to the theoretically optimum risk level of .50. (d) Developmental patterns in academic risk-taking vary with situational factors. (e) Academic risk-taking varies with content. (f) Academic risk-taking tends to be higher for American students than for Chinese students and higher for Chinese students from industrial settings in contrast to government-employment settings. Three hypotheses were formulated to explain the field observations: the variable payoff hypothesis, the accuracy-d...

Academic Risk Taking, Development, and External Constraint

AbstractAcademic risk taking (selection of school-like tasks ranging in difficulty and probability of success) was examined in natural settings in an effort to identify influencing factors and to examine students’ intrinsic motivation. Six hundred two fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade Taiwan students from a rural and urban school were given a self-report measure of tolerance for school failure as well as a quantitative and spatial judgment risk-taking task with variable payoffs (response value increased with item difficulty). Level of response accuracy and level of item difficulty-with ability controlled-served as the risk-taking variables. As predicted, risk taking as defined by item difficulty increased with development. Also consistent with prediction, subjects obtained significantly lower accuracy scores (implying higher risk) on the less familiar spatial task than on the quantitative task. Failure tolerance decreased significantly with grade in the rural school only and was higher for boys than for g...

Effects of Failure: Alternative Explanations and Possible Implications

Is failure1 as devastating as popular opinion and humanist psychologist imply (Glasser, 1969)? Is there conclusive evidence to support the prevalent practice of minimizing the amount of failure students experience? Are the levels of success associated with the use of programmed materials, inflated grades, and mastery learning techniques ensuring optimum student motivation and cognitive development? A review of theories and research related to the effects of failure suggests that these are not naive questions and cannot be given simplistic answers. Rather, such a review leads one to conclude that educators who teach by the maxim, “Nothing succeeds like success,” at least sometimes may be doing students more harm than good.

THE EFFECT OF SEX ON COLLEGE ADMISSION, WORK EVALUTION, AND JOB INTERVIEWS

Studies have repeatedly shown that girls lead boys in general intellectual development (1, 7, 9) as well as early academic achievement (3, 5, 10, 13). On the basis of such evidence, women might anticipate preferential treatment in events related to academic performance. Women have insisted, however, that they are discrimi nated against in academia as elsewhere. Three experiments2 were designed to investigate whether or not their contention is true. The studies attempted to determine: Are women discriminated against in college admissions? Are the creative productions of women underrated? Does the PhD candidate have equal opportunity for employ ment regardless of sex? The answer to these questions is compelling: The results indicate that unless a woman is of unusual ability and/or is an acknowledged success, she must expect to be treated inequitably.

Conservation of Area: Piagetian Versus Discrimination Training Methods

There is evidence to indicate that the experimental induction of conservation behavior is dependent upon an empirical specification of operational reversibility. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that conservation can be induced with S-R principles which call attention to the relevant quantitative dimensions and away from irrelevant perceptual dimensions. In this study, training methods representative of these two positions are used to induce conservation of area. Data show that both methods are highly effective as compared to a control, and support the conclusion that the empirical specification of reversibility is not a requirement for conservation induction.

Affective and Cognitive Effects of Option in an Educational Setting.

AbstractOption, found to have enhanced academic performance and attitudes of high school Ss, was reexamined using 811 fifth and sixth graders. Choices of study booklets on a 2-week vocabulary unit resulted in lower learning and retention scores than those obtained in a control where booklets were assigned to students. The affective measures of liking and perceived learning were not significantly affected by option. A model accounting for both positive and negative effects of option is proposed and discussed. Assuming performance is generally a positive linear function of task importance, the model postulates that task-importance under option is a function of the substantialness and expectancy of the option.

Review two books on affect

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. Learning Together and Alone: Cooperation, Competition, and Individualization. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1975. 224 pages.

The Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Teacher Expectations

4.95. Ringness, T. A. The Affective Domain in Education. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. 208 pages.