“Teachers facing academic failure: Intelligence social representations and educational practices”.

This paper describes two studies concerning the issue of educational practices used by teachers faced with academic failure, considering the role of causal attribution and of the social representations of intelligence. We argue that effort can be considered an implicit norm of conduct of the educational environment applied to the student’s role (Matteucci & Gosling, 2004), and that social representations enter the process of causal explanation and of responsibility ascription. The first study investigated the influence of different types of causal attribution for student’s failure (lack of effort vs. lack of ability) on educational practices chosen by 122 school teachers. The results show that, in case of lack of effort, teachers decide on more severe practices and on actions which pursue retributive goal. On the contrary, lack of ability attribution gave rise to encouraging actions pursuing utilitarian goal. Overall, these results support the role of causal attribution -and particularly of lack of effort- on disciplinary choices. The second study analyzed the impact of social representations of intelligence shared by 202 high school teachers on causal and responsibility inferences and on education practices. Preliminary analyses reveal the role of social representations on explanations and on educational practices. The results will be discussed with respect to theoretical aspects as well as practical implications.