214 Chapter 6classroom—especially about their conduct
(Myhill & Jones, 2006). One study showed
that this kind of negative feedback affects chil-
dren’s attitudes toward schoolwork and school
in general (Morgan, 2001). Boys and girls were
randomly assigned to receive positive compe-
tence feedback with or without negative feed-
back about the neatness and organization of
their work. Both boys and girls who received
the negative behavioral feedback expressed
less interest in the project and liked the teacher
less than boys and girls who received only the
positive competence feedback. In contrast to
the Dweck and colleagues’ (1978) study, girls
and boys who received the negative behav-
ioral feedback also rated their competence
on the task as lower. These findings suggest
that theeffects of negative behavioral feedback
in the classroom may be far reaching and may
explain why boys have less positive relation-
ships with teachers and less favorable attitudes
toward school compared to girls.Effects on Performance. Teachers’ beliefs
about students’ abilities have been shown to
influence student performance. In one study,
sixth-grade students were followed over the
course of a year to determine the effect of
teachers’ initial expectations on students’
subsequent performance in math (Jussim &
Eccles, 1992). The investigators studied 98
teachers and 1,731 students. Although girls
and boys performed equally well in math,
teachers perceived that girls performed bet-
ter and tried harder, but that boys had more
talent. In other words, the teachers attributed
girls’ performance to effort and boys’ perfor-
mance to ability. Teachers’ attributions to
effort appeared to be erroneous because girls
did not report expending greater effort on
math than boys did. What is important is that
teachers’ perceptions of students’ math abil-
ity predicted the change in math achievementtheir performance. Thus, positive feedback is a
clear indicator of good performance for boys but
not as meaningful for girls because it sometimes
has to do with nonintellectual aspects of their
performance. Girls, then, are unsure whether to
take positive feedback about their work seriously
because teachers are providing positive feed-
back about other domains not relevant to work,
such as their appearance or behavior. Here, girls
may conclude, “The teacher just likes me. She
likes how neat I keep my desk and that I don’t
cause trouble. That’s why I received an A on my
homework.” The investigators also found that
teachers made different attributions for boys’
and girls’ failures: Teachers were more likely to
make attributions to motivational factors, such
as lack of effort, for boys than for girls.
If these findings hold true today, what
are the implications for how teachers and
parents should provide feedback to children?
Should we start criticizing girls for behavior
unrelated to their work so they can discount
negative feedback and make external attribu-
tions for failure? That would not seem to be
an optimal solution. Alternatively, we could
make sure we are providing positive feed-
back to females about areas relevant only to
work, so the positive feedback is salient and
directly tied to their performance. The idea
here is to eliminate the positive feedback
about performance-irrelevant domains such
as appearance. If we take Dweck and col-
leagues’ (1978) results seriously, the idea of
complimenting or praising children about
something unrelated to their work to soften
the blow before providing negative work-
related feedback is doing them a disservice.
The study by Dweck and colleagues is
nearly 35 years old. Is there any more recent
evidence on this issue? Unfortunately, no
one has tried to replicate this study in recent
years. Research still shows that boys receive
more negative feedback than girls in theM06_HELG0185_04_SE_C06.indd 214 6/21/11 8:10 AM