The influence of problem ownership on teachers' perceptions of and strategies for coping with problem students.

Abstract

Elementary teachers read vignettes depicting incidents involving (fictional) students who presented' chronic behavior problems, and then told how they would respond if the incidents occurred in their classrooms. Responses were coded for attributions about the students and about the teachers' roles in causing and remediating the problems. Teachers attributed controllability and intentionality.to students presenting teacher-owned problems, but not to students presenting student-owned problems. Students presenting shared problems often were seen as able to control their behavior, but not as misbehaving intentionally. The contrasting patterns of attribution seen in these three levels of problem ownership were also associated with-.contrasting patterns of goals and strategies. The data bear out expectations based on attributional analyses of helping behavior, but raise questions about teachers' preparedness to cope with problem students.