The Relationships Among Praise, Children's Theory Of Intelligence And Their Responses To Failure

Children in school, especially in achievement domain would inevitably encounter failure more or less. In the face of failure, children showed helpless versus mastery-oriented pattern: helpless children exhibited negative self-cognitions, negative affect, and impaired performance, whereas mastery-oriented children exhibited constructive self-instructions and self-monitoring, positive affect, and effective problem-solving strategies. Apparently helpless pattern was harmful to children's achievement adjustment, whereas mastery-oriented pattern was beneficial. Recently, western psychologists explored the relationships of adults' praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure. Adults' praise and the relationships of adults' praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure under Chinese cultural background may be different from those under others. The present two studies explored kindergarten and elementary school teachers' praise in class and the relationships among adults' praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure.In study I , the praise patterns used in everyday class were investigated by analyzing kindergarten and elementary school's classes of high quality. In study , the relationships among praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure were examined by experiment with 4-12 age samples. Then, hierarchical regressions were conducted to investigate the relations of praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure.The main findings in the above two studies are as follows:1. Teachers usually used outcome praise, person praise and process praise in class of high quality. Among the praise, outcome praise was used most often, which was 72.44% in all praise; person praise, which was 21.23% in all, was used less often than outcome praiseand process praise was the least one, which was only 3.16% in all.2. There were significant differences among children' responses to failure after different kinds of praises. In the face of failure, children showed more helpless responses after person praise, whereas children showed more mastery-oriented responses after process praise. Children' responses to failure after outcome praise fell between the responses of the former two groups.3. There was significant age difference in children' responses to failure. 4-age-old children showed more positive responses to failure than 8 and 12-age-old children.4. Children's theory of intelligence had significant effects on their responses to failure. Entity theorists showed more negative responses to failure, whereas incremental theorists showed more positive ones.5. There was significant difference in children's theory of intelligence after different kinds of praises. Children tended to endorse an entity theory after person praise; whereas children tended to endorse an incremental theory after process praise.6. Praise, children's theory of intelligence and their responses to failure had close relationships. Praise had directly effects on children's responses to failure, and had directly effects on children's responses to failure through the effects on children's theory of intelligence.