Teacher and Parent Causal Perceptions of School Problems

Abstract

Attribution interviews were conducted with 30 mothers who had recently disagreed with their child's teacher regarding the cause of a school-related problem and with 30 teachers who had similar disagreements with a parent. Parents tended to hold teachers primarily responsible for these problems and, to a lesser extent, characteristics of their children not under personal control By contrast, teachers assigned most responsibility to parent-home factors, next most to controllable child characteristics, and none to themselves. Teachers accurately predicted parents' attributions but parents were not aware how much they were held accountable by teachers.