Previous research on individual differences in susceptibility to learned helplessness in school age children demonstrates that, for a significant proportion of children, inadequate performance on some tasks leads to subsequent impaired performance and lowered motivation--responses that may have quite negative and perhaps even long-lasting effects on achievement level. The proposed line of research seeks to examine potential antecedents of such maladaptive responses to failure situations. The first study proposed examines the effect of strategies teachers use to motivate students on students' motivational orientations (extrinsic versus intrinsic), perceptions of competence and achievement level in a naturalistic setting. This research is guided by the hypothesis that teacher strategies that foster an extrinsic motivational orientation in students (i.e., performing assignments primarily to please the teacher and/or to avoid criticism) may not only have a negative impact on students' perceptions of competence, but may ultimately lead to low achievement in students--the primary measure of helplessness. The processes mediating the effect of a child's motivational orientation on susceptibility to helplessness (i.e., subsequent achievement) will be examined in a second study using an experimental methodology. It is proposed that an extrinsic motivational orientation may produce susceptibility to helplessness, as indexed by children's performance and perseverance following failure, since children with this orientation, in comparison to their intrinsically motivated counterparts, are assumed to experience low perception of competence and controllability.