Informational Value of Teachers' Evaluative Behavior on Perceived Ability and Effort among Chinese Students.

Chinese students and teachers perceive a different pattern of relationships between academic ability and effort than do American students and teachers. This study of the effect of teachers' evaluative behavior on the perceived academic ability and effort of Chinese students replicates a study by Meyer (1979) using American students. The sample consisted of 599 Chinese elementary, secondary, and university students, and 96 teachers. Subjects were asked to evaluate a series of scenarios in which a teacher either praised a student performance, blamed a student for failure, or gave a neutral response to student performance on tasks of varying difficulty. Chinese students were found to be similar to American students in that they perceived that success in difficult tasks indicated higher ability and effort than those in easy ones, and failure in easy tasks indicated lower ability and effort than in difficult ones. Also, task difficulty was an important cue for ability and effort levels among older students, but success or failure was the cue for ability and effort among younger students. However, ability and effort are very closely related for Chinese students, but are perceived as two separate entities by American students. A list of 13 references and three tables of statistical data are appended. (FMW)