Believe In Yourself, You're Worth It! Part I

“Students Will Become Life-long Learners.” How often have we seen this listed as one of the ESLR’s (Expected School Wide Learning Results)? Most schools flaunt it, but how many can deliver, or even know how?

Self-efficacy, knowing you have the ability to achieve goals or outcomes, is one of the major steps necessary toward transforming a student into becoming a life-long learner. Students endowed with self-confidence and intrinsic motivation, are willing to tackle difficult challenges and, when they do, are less likely to let setbacks discourage them from moving forward. On the contrary, their counterparts, students with low self-efficacy, generally do not fully believe they can be successful, and are therefore less likely to make a concerted effort. They often consider challenging tasks as certain failure, or even as threats that are to be avoided. Ultimately, students with poor self-efficacy have low aspirations, often resulting in below par academic performance. (Margolis and McCabe, 2006).

So, what do you do? Is there a prescription for helping students improve self-efficacy? If so, how can we provide students with this magic potion?
Here are a few proven methods:

1-Cooperative learning – Students working together and helping each other promotes more positive feelings of one’s own capability and higher academic attainment than do individualistic or competitive methodologies.

2-Encouraging validation – Teachers can boost self-efficacy with meaningful verbal feedback and communication to guide the student through a task or motivate them to give it their best effort.

3-Eyewitness experience – Observing a classmate succeed at a task, demonstrates the proper way to do the task and strengthens the belief in one’s own abilities.

4-Knowing you know it – When students know they have mastered a subject or a skill, it boosts their self-efficacy. Successful experiences boost self-efficacy, while failures erode it. This is the best source of self-efficacy.

5-Positive learning environment – Positive emotional stimulation can energize students, providing the setting conducive to a strong performance. (See previous blog posting: Creating a Safe and Nurturing Classroom http - teaching4achange.blogspot.com).

A student gifted with self-efficacy is already blazing the trail as a life-long learner.

Would you like more examples of pedagogies to improve self-efficacy in your students? Look for my Blog posting next Sunday.

"Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body."
- Dr. Maxwell Maltz, motivational speaker