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This chapter presents empirical evidence on the effects of attributional retraining (AR), a motivation-enhancing treatment that can offset maladaptive explanatory mind-sets arising from adverse learning experiences. The evidence shows that AR is effective for assisting college students to adapt to competitive and challenging achievement settings.

This chapter describes the characteristics of AR protocols and details three primary advances in studying AR efficacy in terms of achievement performance, psychosocial outcomes, and processes that mediate AR-performance linkages. The psychological mechanisms that underpin AR effects on motivation and performance are outlined from the perspective of Weiner’s (1974, 1986, 2012) attribution theory.

Laboratory and field studies show that AR treatments are potent interventions that have short-term and long-lasting psychosocial, motivation, and performance benefits in achievement settings. Students who participate in AR programs are better off than their no-AR counterparts not just in their cognitive and affective prospects, but they also outperform their no-AR peers in class tests, course grades, and grade-point-averages, and are more persistent in terms of course credits and graduation rates.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on treatment interventions in achievement settings by documenting key advances in the development of AR protocols and by identifying the next steps critical to moving the literature forward. Further progress in understanding AR efficacy will rest on examining the analysis of complex attributional thinking, the mediation of AR treatment effects, and the boundary conditions that moderate AR treatment efficacy.

This paper aims to report a non-randomized control study undertaken to investigate prevalence and correlates of conduct disorder among male secondary education students in South-West Nigeria and to assess the impact of a problem-solving skills and attributional retraining (PSSAR) intervention with this population.

In total, 787 male students from two schools were screened for conduct disorder. All participants who met criteria for the disorder were allocated to either treatment (n = 55) or control (n = 47) groups. Outcome measures comprised the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ; teacher and student versions) and the teacher rating of students’ aggressive behaviors.

Of the sample, 13% were found to present with difficulties that met criteria for conduct disorder. The presence of these difficulties correlated with several demographic variables, including parental conflict and alcohol use. A statistically significant reduction in mean scores was observed for the treatment group in the student rating of the SDQ emotional subscale and total difficulties scores. Teacher ratings were less consistent in that conduct problems, prosocial behavior and total difficulties increased following the intervention, whereas peer problems and aggressive behavior were reported by teachers to reduce. No statistically significant change was found in the outcome measures for the control group.

In resource-constrained settings, school-based interventions are an important means through which treatment gaps in child and adolescent mental health can be addressed.

In resource-constrained settings, school-based interventions are an important means through which treatment gaps in child and adolescent mental health can be addressed. This study’s findings offer some preliminary support for the PSSAR intervention for conduct disorder in this context and indicate areas for further research.

Achievement motivation is not a fixed quantity. Rather, it depends, in part, on one’s subjective construal of the learning environment and their place within it – their narrative. In this paper, we describe how brief interventions can maximize student motivation by changing the students’ narratives.

We review the recent field experiments testing the efficacy of social-psychological interventions in classroom settings. We focus our review on four types of interventions: ones that change students’ interpretations of setbacks, that reframe the learning environment as fair and nonthreatening, that remind students of their personal adequacy, or that clarify students’ purpose for learning.

Such interventions can have long-lasting benefits if changes in students’ narratives lead to initial achievement gains, which further propagate positive narratives, in a positive feedback loop. Yet social-psychological interventions are not magical panaceas for poor achievement. Rather, they must be targeted to specific populations, timed appropriately, and given in a context in which students have opportunities to act upon the messages they contain.

Social-psychological interventions can help many students realize their achievement potential if they are integrated within a supportive learning context.

We review past research on the relationship between attributional perceptions, emotions, and workplace aggression and develop a conceptual model that extends this research in two ways. First, we consider the influence of controllability attributions on the type (otherdirected, self-directed, hostile, non-hostile) and likelihood of aggressive responses to negative workplace outcomes and situations. Second, we consider the extent to which discrete negative emotions might mediate these attribution-aggression relationships. Implications for anticipating and preventing workplace aggression based on this conceptual model are discussed.

This paper emphasizes that employee attributional processing is a vital element in understanding employee aggression in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to summarize attributional perspectives and integrate recent theoretical advances into a comprehensive model.

The paper achieved its objectives by reviewing and integrating research and theories on aggression, cognitive processing, and attribution processes to explain how employee aggression unfolds in the workplace. Propositions are suggested.

It was found that early conceptualizations proposing that employee attributions and attribution styles would play important and significant roles in predicting employee aggression were supported by recent research enabling theoretical advancements.

Over the last 15 years, research advances show how attributions influence employee aggression. This paper integrates recent theoretical advances with prior empirical evidence and provides a comprehensive model exhibiting how attributions influence aggression in the workplace.

Although we have improved identification of and access to evidence-based interventions for addressing student problem behavior, teacher use of these practices remains low. In this chapter, we examine teachers’ causal attributions for student problem behavior and their implications for use of effective school-based behavioral interventions and supports. Attribution theory and research suggest that causal attributions strongly influence how individuals (e.g., teachers) perceive and respond to the problem behavior of others (e.g., students). Teacher perception regarding problem behavior and appropriate responses to it can be a significant barrier to the adoption and sustained implementation of empirically supported practices. In light of these factors, causal attribution theory and research can be used as a framework for better understanding and even changing teacher beliefs related to acceptance, implementation, and sustained use of effective behavior management practices. In this chapter, we make the case for cultivating an understanding of teachers’ causal attributions of student problem behavior and considering implications of causal attributions in future research. We explore how such research endeavors can potentially positively impact teacher implementation of effective school-based behavioral interventions and supports.

For a number of years, the American School Counselor Association has been working to identify and clarify the role and function of school counselors within Developmental and Comprehensive School Counseling programs. The terms “Developmental” and “Comprehensive” mean that school counseling programs establish goals for their programs that are developmentally appropriate to the age and needs of students and that current and future goals build upon previous goal achievement. Thus, school counseling programs should be in place throughout students’ entire K-12 academic experience.

This paper aims to extend the traditional conceptualization of localization, which has largely focused on recruitment, by examining “employability” and “retention” as crucial determinants of localization success.

Using survey data from local (Emirati) employees in private sector organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the authors develop a holistic model of localization and test the relationships between stereotypes, organizational socialization, employability and retention outcomes, using Smart-PLS.

Among the main findings are the significant influence of stereotypes on organizational socialization (OS) experiences of Emirati employees, with a negative relationship between “work ethics stereotypes” and perceptions of OS experiences. Strong evidence is also found for the indirect effects of OS experiences on retention of Emirati employees, mediated by employability.

This study contributes to the literature on localization by examining the relationships between key variables not examined together in previous research. In terms of limitations, the cross-sectional nature of the study prevents the identification of direction of causality among these relationships. Since employee integration, as part of localization efforts, is a gradual process, future research should include longitudinal studies.

Employability has emerged as a significant challenge for organizations and governments working to implement successful localization initiatives. This study’s findings highlight several opportunities for organizational and governmental policy interventions to support successful localization.

The authors’ holistic model extends localization literature by providing evidence for the role of stereotypes and employability as key constructs to be examined along with OS experiences and retention.