Causal Attribution Tendencies of Early Childhood Practitioners and the Efficacy of Attribution Retraining

Early childhood practitioners frequently attempt to identify the cause of outcomes experienced by their learners. This is sometimes referred to as causal attribution. Causal attribution may be affected by prior success and failure of a learner, the amount of effort exerted by the learner, the ability level of the learner, and knowledge of any disability associated with the learner, all of which can be considered controllable or uncontrollable, stable or unstable, and internal or external (Weiner, 1986; Woodcock & Vialle, 2011). As practitioners attribute cause to outcomes, they start to develop attributional tendencies; these tendencies, along with the cues and public behaviors associated with these attributional tendencies, may have an impact on future outcomes of learners (Graham, 2020; Toevali & Kikas, 2016). It is important that practitioners develop adaptive attributional tendencies in which cause is attributed to controllable and unstable variables. One potential teaching approach for developing adaptive attributional tendencies is attribution retraining (Haynes et al, 2011; Wilson & Linville, 1982; 1985). This dissertation is a foundational dissertation that will examine multiple aspects of attribution, addressing several gaps in the extant literature including attributional tendencies of early childhood practitioners, attribution retraining for early childhood practitioners, and the thoughts and beliefs on attribution of early childhood practitioners. The study included a quantitative randomized control pre-test/post-test study that examined the efficacy of attribution retraining on a sample of early childhood practitioners and a qualitative thematic analysis that used semi-structured interviews to explore the thoughts and beliefs of early childhood practitioners regarding attribution of success and failure. Results from the quantitative portion of the study were inconclusive but did suggest that attribution retraining could potentially be effective in the future. Results from the qualitative portion of the study showed early childhood practitioners emphasize social-emotional learning and support, and the importance of family and family collaboration, when attributing cause to success and failure. This study established a foundation for future attribution and attribution retraining research with early childhood practitioners and parents of young children. Results are expanded on and discussed, then the implications for future research and practice are given. Future research should continue to explore attributional tendencies of early childhood practitioners and attribution retraining as a teaching tool for educating early childhood practitioners, as well as family members of young learners. Future research should include qualitative methodologies and mixed methodologies in order to capture more complete information about early childhood practitioners, and family members.