This study presents research focused on the question: Which effects do teachers´ attitudes have on students´ academic self-concept and students´ competences? The study is informed by the theoretical perspective that failures endanger motivation and self-confidence, especially when they are related to a belief in a deficit of one´s own competences (i.e.: Dresel/Ziegler, 2006). Along with assumptions about the level of their own competences, individuals also have different theories about the convertibility of their own competences (Dweck, 1999). These “implicit theories“ (Dresel/Ziegler, 2006) are very important, because they usually correlate closely to school achievement. Dresel and Ziegler (2006) found that competences and individual skills can be improved especially when students and teachers are confident about the convertibility of these variables and when teachers pick this out as a central theme. In our intervention study we investigate whether a change in the teaching and learning setting (moving from a focus on deficits to a focus on strenghts) is able to enhance students´ academic self-concept and students´ competences, even across domains.

Starting in September 2007 ten Bavarian secondary schools joined a program in which they are allowed to develop different projects that can help to enhance students´ academic self-concept and students´ competences. We will administer questionnaires to approximately 1500 students and 100 teachers in order to investigate the effects of attitudes on students’ outcome variables. In this longitudinal study teachers and students will be examined in summer 2008 and re-examined in the years 2009 and 2010.

The theoretical perspective suggests that teachers` attitudes belonging to what we describe as “deficit orientation” do not have positive effects on students´ self-concept and competences, whereas teachers` attitudes belonging to what we describe as “strengths orientation” do have statistically significant positive effects on these outcome variables. This project is financed by Stiftung Bildungspakt Bayern.