Do learning difficulties differentiate elementary teachers’ attributional patterns for students’ academic failure? A comparison between Greek regular and special education teachers

This study aimed to (a) investigate whether the presence of learning difficulties (LD) in primary school children differentiates Greek teachers' attributional patterns, emotional responses, expectations and evaluative feedback for the children's academic failures and (b) to examine possible differences between regular and special education teachers' ratings. A total of 265 teachers (163 regular & 102 special teachers), were asked to rate eight vignettes about children's difficulties. The description of each vignette provided three types of information: the presence or absence of LD, a statement of students' ability (high/low ability) and effort expenditure (high/low effort). For the purposes of this study, the analysis focused only on the existence or absence of Learning Difficulties (LD/NLD). The results of the study indicate that the label of LD differentiates teachers' attributions, emotions and future expectancies of students' failure. Both groups of teachers (regular and special education) reported lower stability and controllability attributions for students with LD than for students without LD. At the same time, however, special education teachers view student difficulties as more manageable, and their responses convey less stable and uncontrollable attributions as compared to regular teachers. The effect of teachers' gender was not found significant in most of the cases. Correlations among teachers' ratings showed that the two groups of teachers seem to use a different attribution schema towards failure depending on the presence or absence of LD. Implications from the findings and future recommendations are also presented.