Justice and utility in the classroom: An attributional analysis of the goals of teachers' punishment and intervention strategies.

Abstract

There are a multitude of possible reactions that teachers can have toward students who fall below academic standards. Some of these reactions have utilitarian goals, whereas others are punitive. In this study, the authors investigated these reactions, as well as the situations that determine when these different strategies are likely to be used. Both undergraduates playing the role of teachers (Study 1) and actual high school teachers (Study 2) used attributional information in much the same way to guide their choice of responses to academic failure. Controllable causes of failure give rise to punitive and retributive strategies, whereas lack of controllability elicits utilitarian responses. The stability of the cause moderates teachers' responses to failing students. These attributionally guided interventions are mediated in part by inferences of responsibility, emotional reactions of anger and sympathy, and beliefs in the efficacy of the intervention. The implications of this model are discussed in terms of student motivation and classroom performance. In the public education system, teachers have a considerable amount of freedom to operate their classrooms as they see fit, as long as their system conforms to the guidelines of conduct as mandated by their school district and the law. This leaves teachers with a number of possible interventions for motivating and reprimanding students who fall below their standards of academic achievement. What do teachers do when their students are failing their classes? This is an important issue to address because teachers' reactions to their students can potentially impact students' subsequent motivations, expectations, and behaviors in meaningful ways. In this article, we apply an attributional model of social justice to the intervention decisions that teachers make when dealing with students who do not perform well (see Weiner, Graham, & Reyna, 1997). With this model, we are able to predict whether these interventions are driven by utilitarian or retributive goals. We hope this information will help us to better understand how beliefs about students impact the strategies teachers use as well as the goals teachers have when using these strategies.

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