An analysis of learned helplessness and academic achievement of sixth graders at primary school in accordance with parental attitudes, family social atom and gender

This study aims at investigating whether there is statistically significant difference in the levels of learned helplessness and academic achievement of the 6th Graders in accordance with parental attitudes, family social atom, and gender. The study also aims at analyzing the relationships between these variables. The population of this study consists of 440 students being educated in the Province of Adana. Two hundred nine of them are girls, and 231 are boys. In the study, a Parental Attitudes Instrument was used. It was developed by Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg and Dornbush (1991) in order to measure the students? perceived parental attitudes, and Yılmaz (2000) carried out its validity and reliability studies in our culture. In order to see the level of family social atom, a social atom instrument by Dökmen (1993) was used. An Attribution Style Questionnaire for Children developed by Seligman et al. (1984) and adapted and standardized in Turkish by Aydın (1985) was used so as to measure the level of learned helplessness. In addition, a Personal Information Form was administered to determine the personal features of the students. In order to achieve the related aims, first, frequency and percentage analysis related to the students? schools, gender, age, and parental status. In order to see the differences between the variables factorial ANOVA employed. The test of Tukey HSD was used to find out between which groups are the differences.