Student Beliefs About the Causes of Success and Failure in Music: A Study of Achievement Motivation

Abstract

Elementary and secondary music students' achievement motivation was characterized by the reasons they cited for success and failure in music. The students' free responses were classified according to the two-dimensional model of Attribution Theory in which the causes of success and failure are categorized by locus of control, internal or external, and stability through time, stable or unstable. The major findings of the study were that 80% of the reasons cited for success and failure in music were internal in nature, a greater number of stable reasons were cited for success while more external-unstable reasons were cited for failure, females cited more internal-stable reasons than males, the frequency of internal-stable reasons increased with grade level while internal-unstable reasons declined, and the school attended significantly influenced the type of reasons students provided. The importance of these findings to music education practice and their relationship to previous research in achievement motivation was discussed.