Although causal attributions can at first glance seem a quite narrow research topic for psychologists this area can offer valuable ideas for educational theory and practice. In our everyday practice we notice more and more often students’ difficulties in concentrating on learning and teachers’ difficulties in motivating them. According to Bernard Weiner’s (1980) attributional model of motivation we cannot understand these issues without seeking for explanations people give for their success or failure. These explanations – causal attributions – can be classified in three dimensions: locus of control (internality/externality), stability over time, and controllability. There is a substantial amount of evidence (Bar-Tal 1982) that causal perceptions of success and failure influence the individual’s persistence, intensity and choice behaviour of achievement tasks. Nurmi, Aunola, Salmela-Aro, & Lindroos (2003) have clearly demonstrated that the ways in which individuals approach and respond to academic situations form cumulative, either positive or negative cycles. In recent years causal attribution issues have arisen in novel contexts. For example, more attention has been paid to connections between causal attributions and cultural factors (Parameswaran & Hom, 2001; Laherand & Putnina, 2007). The current study is inspired from the idea to find a meeting point between the attributional theory and the narrative approach. In classical attribution studies causal attributions were mainly explored by asking about them explicitly (see a review of used methods by Hau and Salili 1993). But do causal attributions really form a natural part of success stories? Do students talking about their success naturally include causal explanations into their stories? As narratives are chronological, meaningful and social (created for a certain audience) (Elliott 2005, 3-4) there will be a chance to find out through the analysis of narratives (1) if and when in the course of events causal attributions are mentioned; (2) what meaning is given to causal factors; (3) if and how causal factors are used in social purposes (for example, to create a good image of oneself, etc.).

Written narratives were gathered from 20 female university students (all of them in their early twenties) preparing themselves to be class teachers and art therapists. Their real academic success was not taken into account in selection. Although narratives were produced in written form some principles of the narrative interview introduced by Fritz Schütze (Flick 2006, 172-175; Jovchelovitch & Bauer 2000) were used. To generate the story and to structure it as little as possible the instruction was: “Please write me about a case where you had a success in your learning. Tell the story from the beginning to the end and as detailed as you can.” Only after the story was completed the second instruction followed to stimulate reasoning: “Please write why it happened as you described.”

Analysis in which elements of thematic and structural analysis of narratives were used revealed that causal attributions occur as natural parts in narratives. Causal explanations are significant components in stories and often mark turning points in the cause of events, e.g. directing to certain activity to overcome difficulties. Causal factors are used to describe learning problems and to explain reasons why success was gained. Supposedly some of the use of causal factors in stories is connected with social purposes. Results indicate that combining attributional theory and the narrative approaches can be a fruitful way to understand motivation issues more deeply. That is nowadays important in any area to help people achieve their full potential.