REGULARITIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDRENS CAUSALITY BELIEFS ABOUT SCHOOL PERFORMANCE ACROSS 6 SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS

We examined whether children's (Grades 2-6) causality beliefs about sc hool performance show similar developmental profiles across 6 distinct sociocultural settings (Los Angeles, n = 657; Tokyo, n = 817; East Be rlin, n = 313; West Berlin, n = 517; Moscow, n = 551; Prague, n = 768) with the Means-Ends subscale of the tripartite Control, Agency, and M eans-Ends Interview. Although previous research on these same children has shown sizable differences in their self-related agency and contro l-expectancy beliefs, we found markedly similar developmental patterns in their beliefs about the importance of effort, ability, luck, teach ers, and unknown factors as causes of school performance. These regula rities in children's implicit theories of school suggest that factors such as cognitive maturation, adaptive self-regulatory processes, and commonalties in educational goals are quite uniform influences in shap ing school-related causality beliefs.