Abstract:

Learned helplessness is a phenomenon in which constant failures and disappointments in an individuals life result in a strong self belief that they are powerless, impotent and there is nothing can be done about it. Individuals who strongly believe they are, and they will be, the sole reason of their failures are expected to have low self-esteem, low rate of success which result in more despair toward their future. That is why the impact of learned helplessness on our education system is an important subject to be investigated. In the current study, the role and level of learned helplessness of students who are taking a finance class were investigated in details to understand if there is a correlation between success rates and learned helplessness. For this reason, 190 students, who were enrolled in a Finance class in Economy and Political Science Department in Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University during 2018 fall term, were given a survey. Our results show that 48.9% of all students have low levels of learned helplessnes while 51.1% have high levels of learned helplessness in Math during Finance class they were enrolled in. These results reveal a negative correlation between learned helplessness and success rate in Finance class. Typically students with high grades tend to show less signs of learned helplessness whereas students with low grades shows more signs of learned helplessness overall. Additionally, the influence of gender and diferent level of grades on learned helplessness were investigated. Our results show that there is a strong relationship between different grade levels and learned helplessness in which students tend to show stronger signs of learned helplessness on higher grade levels compared to first year students. On the other hand, no significant relationship was found between learned helplesness and gender of Finance students who participated on this survey.

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