Cross-cultural attribution of academic performance:: A study among Argentina, Brazil and Mexico

The present study explores the most common causes given by high school students to explain their actual academic performance. The theoretical background is based upon Weiner and Osgood's formulations. Brazilian (N = 492), Argentinean (N = 541), and Mexican (N = 561) students in the last three years of secondary school in private and public institutions were studied. His or her own math and social science teacher according to school achievement selected each student. The students were asked to rate the importance of ten typical causes of academic success and to complete a differential semantic adaptation integrated by three concept-stimulus (stability, controllability and externality dimensions) and these specific causes. Students from all three countries considered their effort, their capacity to study, and their intelligence as the most important causes of school achievement. Concerning the dimensional meaning of specific causes, results indicated that successful students, either Argentinean, Brazilian or Mexican agree in perceiving effort, intelligence and study ability as internal and stable causes, but only Brazilian and Mexican students consider mood as an internal stable cause. Test difficulty, family support and teachers' judgment were evaluated as uncontrollable causes by Argentinean and Brazilian students but not by Mexican ones. When considering failure, singular-answering schemes emerged. The findings were discussed in terms of socio-cultural values and educational peculiarities of these Latin American countries.