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This flash animation illustrates the journey of a teacher and student as the student's self-efficacy increases. Sammy has low self-esteem, but his teachersees a teachable moment in his desire to act and sing. She employs verbal persuasion with positive statements and peer modeling by having Sammy observeanother successful classmate who had the same fears. She provides Sammy with specific feedback on his performance, and Sammy has a successful experience inhis tryout as a result. By Jim Stewart, Jill Weldon, Celeste Buckhalter- Pittman, and Holly Frilot.
Source: Orey (2010).
High self-efficacy for a task not only increases a person’s persistence at the task, but also improves their ability to cope with stressful conditions and to recover their motivation following outright failures. Suppose that youhave two assignments—an essay and a science lab report—due on the same day, and this circumstance promises to make your life hectic as youapproach the deadline. You will cope better with the stress of multiple assignments if you already believe yourself capable of doing both of the tasks,than if you believe yourself capable of doing just one of them or (especially) of doing neither. You will also recover better in the unfortunate event thatyou end up with a poor grade on one or even both of the tasks.
That is the good news. The bad news, at least from a teacher’s point of view, is that the same resilience can sometimes also serve non-academic andnon-school purposes. How so? Suppose, instead of two school assignments due on the same day, a student has only one school assignment due, but also holds apart-time evening job as a server in a local restaurant. Suppose, further, that the student has high self-efficacy for both of these tasks; he believes, inother words, that he is capable of completing the assignment as well as continuing to work at the job.
The result of such resilient beliefs can easily be a student who devotes less attention to school work than ideal, and who even ends up with a lower grade on the assignment than he or she is capable of.
Psychologists who study self-efficacy have identified four major sources of self-efficacy beliefs (Pajares&Schunk, 2001, 2002). In order of importance they are (1) prior experiences of mastering tasks, (2) watchingothers’ mastering tasks, (3) messages or “persuasion” from others, and (4) emotions related to stress and discomfort. Fortunately the firstthree can be influenced by teachers directly, and even the fourth can sometimes be influenced indirectly by appropriate interpretive comments from the teacheror others.
Not surprisingly, past successes at a task increase students’ beliefs that they will succeed again in the future. The implication of this basic fact meansthat teachers need to help students build a history of successes. Whether they are math problems, reading assignments, or athletic activities, tasks have toend with success more often than with failure. Note, though, that the successes have to represent mastery that is genuine or competence that is trulyauthentic. Success at tasks that are trivial or irrelevant do not improve self- efficacy beliefs, nor does praise for successes that a student has not reallyhad (Erikson, 1968/1994).
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