ABSTRACT
Failure is an important part of the learning process, yet many students view it as a personal indictment. A biased attributional style can lead to a fear of failure and learned helplessness. Attributional style can be divided into optimistic, pessimistic and hostile. Students use a number of strategies to avoid failure, including self-handicapping, defensive optimism and defensive pessimism. Often, these strategies impact negatively on academic performance. A student with a pessimistic attributional style attributes would attribute failure as being something about them, such as lack of intelligence, but success as something external, such as luck. A pessimistic style assumes that failure has an internal cause that cannot be altered. Taking a pragmatic view, based on the evidence of individual success and failure, can nurture a more realistic view of personal achievement. Teaching students about the success and failure of others can help reframe their own setbacks.
