An Analysis of High School Students’ Attributions, Emotional Reactions and Success Expectancy Regarding their Academic Success and Failure

Abstract

The outcomes of this study are new hypotheses that can be used to strengthen existing theories or to correct and provide new insights regarding students’ attributions of their learning successes and failures, as well as their emotional reactions and expectations of success. Consequently, this will enable the reformulation of theories and, ultimately, the development of new concepts. Based on these new hypotheses, a primary recommendation is proposed, namely the “Attributional Guidance Model.” This recommended guidance model possesses high originality and novelty, as it has rarely been utilized in Indonesian school settings, particularly at the senior high school level. Therefore, this study was conducted by exploring the attributions, emotional reactions, and expectations of success among students at State High Schools in West Kalimantan when they experience academic success and failure. A total of 400 public high school students participated in the study. The attribution inventory, emotional reaction inventory, and success expectation inventory—developed based on Bernard Weiner’s theory—were used as research instruments in this study after being pilot-tested and found to have high validity and reliability. Frequency distribution analysis, t-tests, analysis of variance, and factor analysis were used as data analysis techniques in this study. The results of the study indicate that high school students in West Kalimantan from the Malay, Dayak, Chinese, and other ethnic groups tend to believe that the factors determining their academic success lie within themselves; depend on themselves; and are within their control. The same is true when they experience academic setbacks. When students achieve academic success, their emotional reactions tend to include feeling proud, satisfied, confident, but some also feel surprised. When they experience failure in their studies they tend to feel regret, guilty and feel angry. Finally, they tend to have higher expectations of success when they achieve academic success than when they experience academic failure.