IAP PROOFS © 2008 What the West Can Learn From the East: Asian Perspectives on the Psychology of Learning and Motivation, pp. 217–244 Copyright © 2008 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 217 MOTIVATION, ATTRIBUTION OF ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES, AND ACHIEVEMENT AMONG ARAB STUDENTS WITHIN A SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT M. M. ABU-HILAL Maher M. Abu-Hilal Attributions and goals represent two core aspects of motivation. Motiva- tion as a need to achieve—as defined in Western literature—is the core of progress and development. While attributions refer to the way individuals explain their experiences of success and failure and locate responsibility, goals, particularly, goal orientations, “define why and how people are try- ing to achieve various objectives” (Kaplan & Maehr, 2007, p. 142). Although I am borrowing the definitions of these constructs from West- ern researchers, motivation and perceived control over events among Arab individuals would certainly be different from that of Australians, Americans, or Europeans, and so on, Phalet and Lens (1995) reported several cross-cultural studies and highlighted the limitation of applying the Western model of achievement motivation which focuses on academic and professional domains of achievement and ignores the importance of CHAPTER 10