ABSTRACT This research will explore the interacting roles of social, attributional, and metacognitive contributors to first-grade children's preferences for math strategies. Children are hypothesized to accumulate a set of preferred math strategies based on perceived social acceptability of the strategies, their attributions about the role of effort in learning, and metacognitive knowledge. Children who believe that effort in learning increases ability, as opposed to children who believe that ability is stable, are believed to develop more metacognitive knowledge about strategies and to use strategies that result in good performance. Children who believe ability to be stable and indicative of intelligence are expected to be more influenced in their use of math strategies by teachers', parents', and peers' attitudes toward strategies. The development of strategies and mathematical performance across a single school year will be examined as a function of perceived social attitudes toward strategies, strategy training in the school and home, attributional beliefs, and metacognitive factors. Of special interest will be the shift from external strategies (e.g., fingers) to internal strategies (e.g., mental calculation) since much of children's early strategy use is external and therefore open to the effects of social comment on the desirability of such strategies.
