Putting Together the Research Proposal

 Putting together your research proposal 

a. Research topic 

Self-handicapping attitudes and how attribution retraining can contribute to young English learners’ ability to cope with failure and frustration in a constructive manner.

b. Research problem 

There has not been enough research about self-handicapping attitudes and attribution retraining in our particular context, which is EFL primary classrooms in Buenos Aires province in Argentina. 

c. Research questions

1. What is the effectiveness that attribution retraining has on EFL learners’ self-esteem and performance in the short term? 

2. How can we help students cope with failure by means of attributional retraining techniques?

3. To what extent can attribution retraining help offset self-handicapping attitudes in very young learners?

d. General objective 

To know the extent to which attribution retraining can help counteract self-handicapping attitudes and raise failure tolerance in young EFL learners in a second cycle primary school in Villa Ballester,  Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

e.  A list of bibliographic entries 

• Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2015). Believing You Can is the First Step to Achieving: A CBT and Attribution Retraining Programme to Improve Self-Belief in Students aged 8-12. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

• Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2014). Exploring the contribution of attribution retraining to student perceptions and the learning process. Educational Psychology in Practice: theory, research and practice in educational psychology, 30:1, 78-87, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2014.880048 

• Matteucci, M. C. (2017). Attributional retraining and achievement goals: An exploratory study on theoretical and empirical relationship. European Review of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 279-289.

• Mosak, H., & Maniacci, M. (2013). Encouraging growth. In Mosak, H., & Maniacci, M. (Eds), Primer of Adlerian psychology: The analytic-behavioural-cognitive psychology of Alfred Adler.(pp. 146-161) Routledge.

Increasing Motivation, Attributional Retraining in Young Learners of English as a Foreign Language

 

Abstract

 

The following study will explore the extent of the relationship between attributional retraining and academic performance in young English as a Foreign Language learners through the implementation of Attributional Retraining and Cognitive Behavioural Theory techniques. The data gathering tools include questionnaires, worksheets, vignettes, observation journals, and formative evaluation of cognitive and skill progression. The group under analysis will consist of 27 fifth-grade students who attend a private German school located in Villa Ballester, Buenos Aires province in Argentina. It is believed, that by combining the aforementioned approaches, a behavioural change will be produced in learners, therefore improving academic performance and self-image.  

 

 

 

 

Key words: attributional retraining, academic performance, cognitive behavioural theory, success,  and failure.

 

 

Outline of the article: Bareiro, M. B. & Farfán, G., (2021). Increasing Motivation, Attributional Retraining in young English as a Foreign Language learners.  CAECE University.

 

●      Purpose: To explore the results of implementing attributional retraining techniques in young English as a Foreign Language primary students in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

●      Thesis statement: Through implementing an Attributional Retraining program, language teachers may help young students cope with failure, therefore, improving academic performance and increasing motivation to learn.

●      Audience: English as a Foreign Language teachers, prospective teachers, Primary school teachers.

 

1. ABSTRACT
2. INTRODUCTION

A.    Students’ motivation.

B.    Justification for the study.

C.    Attributional Retraining (AR)

1.     Adaptive styles.

2.     Maladaptive Styles

3.     An AR programs

 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

            A.    AR, student perceptions, and the learning process.

            B.    AR and achievement goals.

            C.    AR and cognitive self-instruction in learning disabilities programs.

            D.    An example of an AR program for young learners.

            E.     Adlerian cognitive psychology.

III. METHODS

A.   Materials, procedures, and data analysis.

B.    Subjects and location. 

C.    Ethical management.

 IV.  EXPECTED OUTCOMES.

5. REFERENCES

 

Increasing Motivation, Attributional Retraining in Young Learners of English as a Foreign Language

Introduction

Students’ motivation is an important concern in the area of education. By means of analysing the factors behind motivational aspects in learning, some insight can be gained in order to improve the learning process and attitudes towards foreign language learning, Attributional Retraining (AR) (Chodkiewicz & Boyle, 2014, 2015) and Cognitive Behavioural Approach (CBA) (Morgan, 1990) are practical and intensive approaches based on the cognitive model of emotional responses in which subjects challenge themselves to solving emotional or behavioural issues. The literature explored includes the following authors and studies:

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2014) Exploring the contribution of attribution retraining to student perceptions and the learning process. Educational Psychology in Practice: theory, research, and practice in educational psychology, 30:1, 78-87, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2014.880048

Aims to empower teaching practitioners to apply Attribution Retraining (AR) techniques in their classrooms. Attempts to bridge the gap between AR as a psychological tool and its implementation in learning environments. Emphasizes the importance of a thorough understanding of AR to avoid encouraging maladaptive styles unwillingly.

 

Matteucci, M. C. (2017). Attributional retraining and achievement goals: An exploratory study on theoretical and empirical relationship. European Review of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 279-289.

 

Defines attributional theory and attributional retraining. Describes the two phases of Attribution Retraining (AR): induction and consolidation. Claims an influencing role of achievement goals on the adoption of adaptive vs maladaptive causal attributions.

 

Morgan IV, A. V. (1990). A study of the effects of attribution retraining and cognitive self-instruction upon the academic and attentional skills, and cognitive-behavioural trends of elementary-age children served in self-contained learning disabilities programs. College of William & Mary - School of Education. Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-vj9b-bv25

 

Explores the literature on cognitive self-instruction approaches and attribution retraining and studies their effects upon academic and attentional skills. Reveals significant primary treatment growth regarding poor attention, poor ego strength, and excessive dependency.

 

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2015). Believing You Can is the First Step to Achieving: A CBT and Attribution Retraining Programme to Improve Self-Belief in Students aged 8-12. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

 

Reveals how negative perceptions of one’s own abilities are a strong influence over whether learners succeed or fail. Devises a workbook to conduct AR in young learners.

Globel, P., & Mori, S. (2007) Success and failure in the EFL classroom: Exploring students´ attributional belief in language learning. Eurosla, 150-169. Doi:10.1075/eurosla.7.09gob

Provides a description of the results of the study about learners’ attributions for success and failure in learning English as a foreign language. Discusses the role of the learning environment and its effect on the learning process.

Much of the research above has been done in college settings or in foreign countries, which is why there is a need to implement and evaluate an AR program in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) primary classrooms in Villa Ballester, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The aim of this exploratory study is to implement Chodkiewicz & Boyle’s (2015) AR program on forty-nine fifth graders to draw preliminary conclusions on the effects of AR in learners’ ability to cope with failure and frustration within our particular context by means of answering the following research questions:

 1. What is the effectiveness that attribution retraining has on EFL learners’ self-esteem and performance in the short term?

2. How are students self-perceived before and after the implementation of an AR program?

3. To what extent can attribution retraining help offset self-handicapping attitudes in very young learners?

Methods

 

Materials, procedures, and data analysis

The aim of this exploratory research is to explore the extent of the relationship between attributional retraining and academic performance in EFL young learners in a school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. To collect data, questionnaires, observations, vignettes, and formative evaluation of language content and skills will be implemented before and after using the Attributional Retraining activities and sessions proposed by Chodkiewicz and Boyle (2015) in their book Believing you can is the First Step to Achieving. First, attitudinal aspects regarding the students’ self-perception will be analysed. Then, by means of collecting further data, the correlation between behaviour and cognitive performance will be documented and explored.

Subjects, location, and time allocation

The study will be conducted during the last trimester of 2021. The subjects will be 27 ten-year-old (5th grade) students who attend a private German school in which English is the third language taught?. The school is located in Villa Ballester, in Buenos Aires province in Argentina.

Ethical management

Conducting research on children comes with great ethical responsibilities. To avoid ethical issues, parents and students will be informed of the study being conducted, its aims, time allocation, methods and procedures, possible outcomes, and risks.  Written consent will be required. Both adults in charge and children will be able to opt-out of the study without there being any consequences, before or during the research process. In addition, no real names will be displayed in any document, appendix, or article section to protect the subjects’ privacy.

 

Desired Outcomes

• After conducting the current study, education practitioners will be able to:
• Apply theories and techniques in a teaching context to observe young learners’ response to a stimulus given.
• Reflect to what extent attribution failure affects learners’ academic performance contrasting the results before and after the study.
• Enhance well-being in young learners’ classrooms in order to increase successful performances in foreign language acquisition.
• Infer the scope of emotional well-being in young learners’ classroom to determine failure or success.
•  Improve the negative impact maladaptive attribution has on failure in young learners.
• Find practical tools to raise students’ self-esteem in the foreign language classroom.
• Use research findings to create safe learning environments by putting into practice programs and techniques explored in different teaching contexts.
• Construct appropriate and professional criticism about current teaching practice.

 

REFERENCES

  

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2015). Believing You Can is the First Step to Achieving: A CBT and Attribution Retraining Programme to Improve Self-Belief in Students aged 8-12. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

 

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2014). Exploring the contribution of attribution retraining to student perceptions and the learning process. Educational Psychology in Practice: theory, research and practice in educational psychology, 30(1), 78-87, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2014.880048

 

Globel, P., & Mori,S. (2007) Success and failure in the EFL classroom: Exploring students´ attributional belief in language learning. Eurosla, 150-169. Doi:10.1075/eurosla.7.09gob

Matteucci, M. C. (2017). Attributional retraining and achievement goals: An exploratory study on theoretical and empirical relationship. European Review of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 279-289.

 

Morgan IV, A. V. (1990). A study of the effects of attribution retraining and cognitive self-instruction upon the academic and attentional skills, and cognitive-behavioural trends of elementary-age children served in self-contained learning disabilities programs. Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539618346. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-vj9b-bv25

 

Practice Makes Perfect: The Fine Art of Writing IntroductionS

 

The following analysis of the introduction of the paper presentation A small-scale study of primary school English language teachers' classroom activities and problems. (Arikan, 2011) will be carried out under the light of Swales’ (1990) book: Genre analysis: English in academic; Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (Swales & Feak, 2014) and following APA guidelines.

 

One of the most important features of research papers is the title. It works as a hook for the reader hence it should be appealing and attention-drawing. For this article, the author chose an attractive title which does not follow APA format completely (i.e., it is centred but it is not well capitalized). As regards in-text citations, some are included although all of them are narrative as in the case of “Er (2007)” (Arikan, 2011, p.2). For the sake of variety, the author could have chosen different in-text citations so as to interest the reader. Possible citations are: narrative, parenthetical and block quotations. The spelling is correct, there is enough variety of sentence patterns and paragraph length is relatively similar making the introduction visually balanced.  Organisation wise, most of the author’s ideas appear vague and unrelated. Maybe, a more thorough literature review together with more relevant details could have aided in organization which would have resulted in better message conveying. Therefore, making the purpose of the study completely clear.

 

The introduction aims at providing a rationale for the article and justifying the reasons for the study (Swales & Feak, 2014). Due to the fact that research has become an increasingly competitive discipline, introductions are also written to capture prospective readers’ attention. Swales (1990) devised a framework for standardized, competitive and functional introductions called Create A Research Space (CARS) which is composed of three distinctive moves. Move one establishes the territory, move two indicates a gap and creates a niche which will be then occupied by the current study.

In the case of Arikan’s (2011) introduction, the three moves can be appreciated though there is a constant shift between move one and two which distracts the reader. For example, in paragraph one the author provides background knowledge and begins with the literature review. In paragraph two, the author establishes the niche by indicating the gap in current knowledge (move 2) but then resumes the literature review (move 1). Move three is clearly defined in the third paragraph and provides the following purpose statement: “much research is needed [...] so that the quality of teaching increases as expected and planned” (Arikan, 2011, introduction para. 3) together with a list of research questions to be addressed during the study. 

 

It would have been better for the writer to respect moves chronologically to aid comprehension and ease reading. Another important mistake made in the introduction under analysis is that the rationale for the study is not clear even though a purpose statement was included. All in all, there is not enough evidence of the impact that the study may have on the issue being addressed nor enough information on the topic. This could have been avoided by means of clarifying the purpose of the study and selecting relevant literature review.

 

References

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).  American Psychological Association.

Arikan, A. (2011, April 27-29). A small-scale study of primary school English language teachers' classroom activities and problems. [Paper presentation]. 2nd International Conference on New Trends in Education and their Implications. Antalya, Turkey. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519176.pdf

Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.

Swales, J.M. & Feak, C.B. (2012). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (3rd ed.). The University of Michigan Press.

Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice, Attributional Retraining in the Primary English as a Foreign Language Classroom

 

Introduction

Students’ motivation is an important concern in the area of education. By means of analyzing the factors behind motivational aspects in learning, some insight can be gained in order to improve the learning process and attitudes towards foreign language learning in young learners.

According to Chodkiewicz (2014) maladaptive styles, such as avoidance or surrender translate into poorer academic achievement. Attribution retraining is a psychological technique used to encourage adaptive attributions to foster self-esteem. Therefore, causal attribution processes are key to motivation (Mateucci, 2017).  Mateucci (2017) conducted an exploratory study to demonstrate and analyze the correlations between      Attributional Retraining (AR)  techniques and achievement goals in college students. Even though the findings of the study were inconclusive due to the size of the sample, some positive correlations have been evidenced between the application of AR techniques and the overall performance of students. 

Chodkiewicz and Boyle (2015) devised a program to enhance academic achievement and emotional well-being in students from 8 to 12 years, which is almost analogous to the second cycle of primary education in Argentina.   The aforementioned authors claim “that such (psychological) programs may be the missing link needed in our current education system to support both academic achievement and overall well-being among students” (Chodkiewicz & Boyle, 2015, p. 2).

There has not been enough research about self-handicapping attitudes and attribution retraining in our particular context. Much of the research above has been done in college settings or in foreign countries which is why there is a need to implement and evaluate an AR programme in EFL primary classrooms in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The aim  of this  study  is to put to test  AR programs on forty-nine fifth graders in order to draw preliminary conclusions on the effects of AR in learners’ ability to cope with failure and frustration within our particular context by means of answering the following research questions:

 

 

1. What is the effectiveness that attribution retraining has on EFL learners’ self-esteem and performance in the short term?

3. To what extent can attribution retraining help offset self-handicapping attitudes in very young learners?

 

Annotated bibliographies

 

 Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2014) Exploring the contribution of attribution retraining to student perceptions and the learning process. Educational Psychology in Practice: theory, research and practice in educational psychology, 30:1, 78-87, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2014.880048

 

Aims to empower teaching practitioners to apply Attribution Retraining (AR) techniques in their classrooms. Briefly describes cognitive theory. Explores key factors in learner motivation. Provides a definition and examples for AR. Attempts to bridge the gap between AR as a psychological tool and its implementation in learning environments. Differentiates adaptive and maladaptive attributional styles. Proves that maladaptive styles translate into poorer academic achievement. Relates attributional styles to self-esteem, effort and performance. Offers a set of recommendations to encourage adaptive attributions such as feedback and modelling. Emphasizes the importance of a thorough understanding of AR to avoid encouraging maladaptive styles unwillingly. Enumerates examples of successful AR implementation cases. Discusses the usefulness of AR in large classroom settings. Concludes there is a need for systematic application of AR in the classroom together with thorough reports on the results of its implementation within educational settings. 

 

Matteucci, M. C. (2017). Attributional retraining and achievement goals: An exploratory study on theoretical and empirical relationship. European Review of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 279-289.

 

Defines attributional theory and attributional retraining. Describes the two phases of Attribution Retraining (AR): induction and consolidation. Analyses previous studies done in the field. Explains the achievement goals theory. States the methods for the study, participants, procedure and process. Measures and analyses correlations among demographics, achievements goals orientation and causal attributions. Discusses the results. Claims an influencing role of achievement goals on the adoption of adaptive vs maladaptive causal attributions. Partially supports the effectiveness of AR treatment to modify self-defeating attributions. Establishes the limitations of the study. Provides suggestions for further research.

 

 References

 

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2014) Exploring the contribution of attribution retraining to student perceptions and the learning process. Educational Psychology in Practice: theory, research and practice in educational psychology, 30:1, 78-87, DOI: 10.1080/02667363.2014.880048

 

 

Chodkiewicz, A.R., & Boyle, C. (2015). Believing You Can is the First Step to Achieving: A CBT and Attribution Retraining Programme to Improve Self-Belief in Students aged 8-12. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

 

 

Matteucci, M. C. (2017). Attributional retraining and achievement goals: An exploratory study on theoretical and empirical relationship. European Review of Applied Psychology, 67(5), 279-289.