Attributions and learning strategies influence the learning process and academic achievement. Desired attributions and learning strategies that are more complex contribute to pupils' better academic achievement and vice versa; attributions as the reasons for pupils' learning success or failure influence the formation of future learning behavior, the choice of learning strategies and the expected academic achievement. The set of learning strategies that pupils with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) use is modest, which contributes to lower achievements, and consequently, a lack of motivation. These pupils face learning difficulties every day, they are more often faced with demands that are too high (from teachers, parents, learning materials). The reasons for their success or failure are attributed to internal or external factors which influence the willingness to invest effort in future tasks and hence have an effect on the choice of learning strategies as well.
The research sought to obtain new insights regarding the learning of pupils with MID, and its main purpose was to determine which reasons for learning success or failure are mentioned by pupils of the ninth grade of elementary school who are included in the adapted programme with a lower education standard. Moreover, which learning strategies such pupils use and what their academic achievements are as a result of the mentioned concepts was also studied. Data from pupils of the seventh grade of elementary (primary) school was used as the baseline reference value.
The data for the quantitative study was obtained with a questionnaire compiled for the purposes of this master's thesis. The study sample consists of 32 pupils of the ninth grade of the elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard and 30 pupils of the seventh grade of elementary school.
Pupils of the ninth grade of the elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard most often attributed their success or failure to their effort or lack of it. Moreover, they often state that the cause for their success is luck, and that their failure was caused by the difficulty of the task at hand. Pupils of the seventh grade of primary school often attribute the reasons for their success or failure to the same reasons as the pupils of the 9th grade of the elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard; however, the number of occurrences of other reasons for their success or failure differ.
The results show that pupils of the ninth grade of elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard, on average, most commonly use learning strategies of effort regulation, rehearsal strategies, time and study environment management and help seeking strategies. Pupils of the seventh grade of elementary school more often use elaboration and cognitive and metacognitive strategies, while pupils of the ninth grade of the elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard use the strategy of effort regulation more often. The remaining strategies are used by both groups of pupils equally often.
For pupils of the ninth grade of elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between the frequency of attribution of luck as the reason for their success and the frequency of the use of effort control strategies, and a statistically significant negative correlation between the frequency of the attribution of bad luck as the cause for the failure and the frequency of using the strategy of effort management. Statistically significant positive correlation was found between the frequency of attribution of bad luck as the cause of their failure and the frequency of the use of metacognitive strategies and study learning strategies in interaction.
A statistically significant relationship between the frequency of attribution of certain causes of success or failure and academic achievement and the frequency of using certain learning strategies and learning achievements were not found in ninth grade pupils of the elementary school with adapted programme of a lower educational standard. In pupils of the seventh grade of elementary school, however, such connections were proven.
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