Wondering about how to evaluate scaffolding rationally

The importance of making students success has been underlined in enhancing students self-efficacy. Opposite to the statement that “optimist tends to be successful, pessimist tends to be right”, the idea that most of us reach a consensus is that “the experience of success makes people optimistic”, while the emotion or attitude which are defined as pessimistic would be aroused due to the reason that the leader of teaching activities set obstacles to make students failure. The experience of failure, regardless of the genre, relates negative emotion of students.

As for learning objectives, or teachers goal-setting for students in every class, that might be the origin of syllabus and process assignment. People tend to feel safe when they plan ahead in order to face uncertain upcoming accidents? But the argument emerges when individual difference was considered, relating with people's nature of comparing with reference, such as goal set by teachers. They would evaluate how much they meet the objective standard. 

Students would set end in view for each activity for them own, and the learn how to adjust self-set goals by themself as the experience accumulate. But what is the role that teacher plays in it? It seems not that practical when locate every reachable and doable little approximation of progress.

Considerations from DC

While I wasn't present during the class discussion last week, I at least got a flavor for your conversation based on your blog posts.  Our discussions about behaviorism and self-efficacy shaped my interpretation of three experiences during my trip to DC.  I believe that your posts tie into these experiences as well.

Experience 1: Navigation in DC

I drove to DC.  Complications aplenty delayed my departure, which meant instead of driving during the day in the rain, I would be primarily driving during the night in the rain.  I HATE driving in rain at night.  It causes me anxiety primarily because I do not feel confident in my night vision in the rain.  This baseline anxiety grew for multiple reasons: I was getting tired, there was salt all over the road and I worried that my washer fluid would run out, the headlights on the car I was driving are more dim than my typical car, and the route that I chose involves a stretch of 2-lane road with lots of semis at night.  My perceived self efficacy was tanking.  Add to this that my phone battery power was not sufficient to keep Google Maps up and running for the entirety of the trip, so I felt like I was driving basically blind.  Let's just say I was really glad for the glass of wine my friend had waiting for me when I finally arrived.  Despite decades of experience with driving, the context of this experience with driving, complicated by increasing levels of anxiety impacted my perceived efficacy.

This is in stark contrast to navigating within DC over the following 5 days.  I previously lived in the city for 6 months and was very comfortable finding my way by foot and Metro.  High self-efficacy in finding my way given experiences of success.  Even if I took a train in the wrong direction occasionally, I could easily correct for this and had not perceived anxiety related to way-finding.

Experience 2: Laundry and Dishes...the Man Child

My friend is an old friend.  We grew up together and I know her family well.  This includes her older brother.  Over dinner, she was perplexed by the idea that her brother does not do his own laundry or cook.  This is despite the fact that he is single.  His mom and ex-wife do these tasks.  WHAT?!  I suggested to her that he doesn't have to do these things because he knows they will be done for him -- Shamu anyone?  While one could say that he may have low self-efficacy for these traditionally female tasks, I would agree with Ryan's suggestion of value-related behavior.  Why would there be high value placed on jobs that other people are going to do for you?  This man has no reason to develop efficacy for these tasks.

As a connected aside, a labmate of mine who was also in DC was daydreaming about growing up with a mom who did everything for everyone.  She said, "I wish I could go back to my house with the magic sink.  I put dirty dishes in it, and they always came out clean the next day!"  My friend's brother has a magic sink and washing machine!

Experience 3: Parenting in a Restaurant

"I mean it.  This is your last chance!" I was sharing brunch with my husband who came to DC during my last day so we could share the drive home.  While this might seem lame, it's the only way to spend that much time together these days!  During our meal, there was a young family at the next table: mom, dad, son (maybe 5) and daughter (maybe 2).  Let's just say, mom gave son more that one last chance to stop picking on his sister.  He had clearly had this experience in the past with his mom.  And based on her rising tone of voice, she had too!  Her method of correction did little to motivate change.  Or maybe the response from her was his motivation.  Nonetheless, I am certain that he had a great time, and she needed to order another mimosa.  While this common exchange may have low stakes in the scope of this child, it is not difficult to imagine an educational setting with more than one child who has a similar frame of mind to this youngster, informed by experience that a "last chance" is really not that big of a deal.  I have not conclusion to this experience.  Just an observation that I made.

I look forward to re-joining the class this evening!

Change requires willingness

Bandura & Adams (1977) demonstrated that people can overcome phobias via exposure to their fears and corrective experiences. The biggest issue I had with this research is that the participants were presumably seeking a change in behavior. While Bandura does not elaborate much on his recruitment methods, I doubt his advertisement wooed participants by saying anything to the effect of “Afraid of snakes? Let me terrify you through hours of exposure and you’ll get over it.” It stands to reason that the participants wanted to conquer their phobia of snakes; the idea of exposing yourself to your phobias is unnatural and goes against better judgement. 

If we apply this in the classroom with avoidance/anxiety behaviors, doesn’t it also make sense that students would need to want to change their behaviors? We can make attempts to change behavior or desensitize until we are blue in the face, but that seems like it is only half the battle (and the second half of it, at that). In Bandura (1978), he states “the poorer the quality of self-observation, the more difficult is the attainment of self-directed change.” By this logic, if students cannot utilize high quality self-observation to recognize the behavior change that is desired and if the probable outcome of that behavior change is not personally valued, change is less likely to occur. Another facet to consider is whether students possess the self-efficacy to attempt a change, as Bandura also tells us that previously failed attempts at coping will impact subsequent efficacy judgements. 

My question in all of this, however, is to what extent Bandura’s work applies to children, since they likely have a less robust collection of experiences from which to draw conclusions about their own standards of behavior as it pertains to attaining change. Does the quality of self-observation improve with age and experiences or are children and adults equally skilled at self-evaluation for attaining changes?

Pondering upon human beings' agency development

Moving from discussing Skinner's behaviorism to Bandura's social cognitive theory, I could finally see the link between various theories. In social cognitive theory, human beings' behaviors are not merely the consequences from external stimulations like animals. Individuals' cognitive processes play a significant role in making decisions when they encounter different external situations. In this sense, it means that people's behaviors are influenced both by external stimulations and internal personal factors, such as cognition. This makes much more senses to me compared with behaviorism which seems to ignore distinct human characteristics. But I still could not understand how cognition function in dealing with different situations for different peoples. For me, I always very hesitate to make a decision in dealing with vital issues related to me or with significant persons in my life. I feel like it's kind of struggling between different concepts in my mind. Based on my previous experiences, I would say that different thinking process would generate different emotions which would truly influence my final decisions and reactions. But the thing I couldn't figure out is that how to control our own thinkings rather than other peoples' thinkings or behaviors.

Another topic I'm interested in is about Amanda and Ryan's posts that mentioned the relationship between interests and self-efficacy. I feel like when I have interests in something, I tend to have higher self-efficacy but that do not mean I could do well at first. For example, when I started to learn baking and cooking, I failed for so many times. But that doesn't influence my confidence to do that again. So I'm thinking that what does success mean to a person and the relationship between success and self-fulfillment in different contexts and how do we make judgment on our performances based on individual perceptions. When I searched social cognitive theory online, I've noticed that there are many categories and dimensions about human agency. It might be helpful to understand more details about ourselves.

Interest and self-efficacy aren't mutually exclusive (In agreement with Ryan)

  I agree with Ryan that self-efficacy is not the sole predictor of human behavior. I found myself reflecting on my own perceptions of my efficacy within specific tasks or hobbies and how that translates to my value of those actions. The most pertinent personal example that comes to mind is my history with Statistics classes. I took Psych Stats in undergrad because it was required of my major; I began the semester with high self-efficacy for the course, as I was a good math student in high school and I figured that this application wouldn’t be too difficult. However, as the semester progressed, it became very clear that we weren’t going to learn the material in applied settings, and I would have no context under which I would perceive the material as important to my study. With the increase in difficulty of the class and the lack of connection the subject held to my study interest, I began to think that I was just bad at stats and that was that. Thus, I focused my energy on my other classes, and scraped by in the stats class for the sake of my GPA. Now, I’m taking Intro Stats this semester with a previously-developed low sense of self-efficacy for the subject. However, the difference this time is that I have some research background to which I can apply the information I’m learning in the class, therefore increasing my interest in the subject and slowly increasing my sense of self-efficacy. TL;DR, My interest in research has caused me to increase my self-efficacy in a subject about which I previously held a fixed negative mindset.

   Bandura discusses the relationship between interest and self-efficacy in “Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency” (1982, p. 133-135). He explores the various outcomes of using incentives in increasing interest and self-efficacy, and explains that one’s interest in accomplishing tasks can be rooted in the desire for recognition (extrinsic motivation) or the desire to meet a personal goal (intrinsic motivation). Therefore, while it is clear that interest and self-efficacy mutually impact one another, factors such as the type of motivational interest make it difficult to predict the impact that one’s self-efficacy may have on their future choices: as Ryan pointed out, people with similar levels of self-efficacy for a particular task cannot always be expected to pursue the same activities. Bandura acknowledges that motivational theories employ self-efficacy as part of their models along with factors such as interest and social response in order to give greater context surrounding the choices people make. Herein lies the murky waters of human variability.

Anything you can do, I can do better (I just don't want to)

Robin and I were discussing Loretta's post about gender differences in self-efficacy and came to two different conclusions. Robin (as she states much more articulately in her reply on Loretta's post) thinks that the context/domain is a really important piece of this and that there are instances that we inspire less efficacy in boys. While we were talking about this, she brought up things like doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning around the house - things that are typically viewed as "female duties" - as some examples of when domains where men likely feel less efficacious than women. I responded that, on the contrary, I feel very efficacious in those things. In fact I think that I am better at those tasks that my girlfriend.

While that may just be me personally, I think it speaks to a larger topic that I brought up last week, the role of value. I think, and this is especially true for white men/boys, our culture inspires tons of efficacy, whether it be through providing them more opportunities to gain experiences (because of systemic racism and sexism, etc.) or having more visible role models from which to vicariously learn from. I think the reason most (white) men don't do things is not because they don't feel like they can (believe me, we do), but is that they don't see value in the pursuit. For example, fields like nursing and K-12 teaching are female-dominated careers. I think the reason for this gender disparity is not because men don't feel like they can't do these things (there are plenty of men in medical-related and other educational fields), but it is that these jobs are stereotypically female and thus do not fit into the "male identity", thus making pursuing these types of careers less valuable.

This is where my biggest hang-up with self-efficacy being the be-all end-all explanation for all of human behavior: alone, efficacy beliefs cannot explain why two people, who have the same level of efficacy for a particular task/pursuit, can still choose different things to engage in. Which is why I lean towards motivational theories like Expectancy-Value theory, which take all the good parts about self-efficacy and add in that value piece as an explainer of human motivation and behavior.

Personalizing Desensitization

I had a bit of a tough time with some of the readings I did for this week. In class last week we talked about desensitizing and teachers and students and when that might be something to explore. However, as I think about it further the how seems really important. Reading about the various ways to desensitize someone, is all well and good, but will it ever work if you do not know the full range of their prior experiences.  Desensitizing someone who is afraid of snakes but has never actually seen one in person may be very different than desensitizing someone who has be bitten by a snake before.  Similarly, in a classroom setting each student’s experiences with reading may be vastly different. While I get the idea that some methods generally work better than others, I worry that if you try to re-introduce an activity too soon, before fully desensitizing a child, it may set you back even further, and any progress they may will be lost. How do you know when desensitization has worked? How can you start to plan the process of desensitization for a student? While I appreciated the readings for their content I felt that they were woefully lacking in practicality and consideration of individual experience. Maybe this is covered in other readings I have not gotten to yet, but for now, what are other people’s thoughts on desensitization in practice? Have you tried it before?

How efficacy expectancies should be assessed in classrooms?

What drives our behavior? What determines our decisions? To what extend our behavior is malleable? These are questions that researchers from different fields have tried to answer. From psychology, Bandura expanded the proposal of operant learning. On the one hand, the author proposed that the individual plays an active role mediating the association between her behavior and its consequence. She processed, weights, and integrates information about her capability. On the other hand, Bandura suggested that we have a sense of capacity to successfully execute the behavior that produce an expected outcome (efficacy expectancy). The efficacy expectancy affects the initiation and persistence of our coping behaviors, and it is built upon (mainly) on one’s experiences. Thus, as we discussed in class, this theory might advocate the idea that pedagogical strategies and interventions should be flexible so that they can be adapted to each student’s needs and preferences. As result, students’ efficacy expectancy is strengthened, and they engage more in their academic activities.  However, when I think about this idea, I wonder how we should start to create such learning environment. My first thought is that the first task for teachers (or practitioners who work with students) is to learn about their students’ self-efficacy. But I wonder what specifically they need to know: its level of magnitude? Its level of generality? Or its level of strength? In this line, I also would like to discuss to what extent this information is accessible. Is it something that can be reported by the person? In the case of phobias, it is (to some extent) easy to report the threatening objects (e.g., snakes), but in the case of students’ learning in classroom settings what should be reported?    

Anxiety, Driving, and Efficacy Enhancement

I have been reflecting on our brief discussion of anxiety… and made a few new connections: “Anxiety is caused by experience” and “My thinking causes me to have anxiety.”  Anxiety is based on experiences. Experience shapes cognition, which facilitates anxiety.  I am curious: How does anxiety affect my self-efficacy? Is it easier for a child to change cognitive thinking, than an adolescent or an adult?  If the strongest way to change behavior is through participant modeling, then How can we desensitize students from anxiety? I have also been pondering teacher anxiety… and the correlation between their anxiety about student behavior versus their anxiety about student performance. Michael suggested that the teacher’s past experiences will shape whether their anxiety will be connected or separate. Because teachers experience pressure from parents, evaluations, and student standardized test scores, should we desensitize teachers? If so, how? 

I admit that my low efficacy in my 16-year old’s driving ability could cause him to have low efficacy. I was certainly aware of this idea when homeschooling.  My students would not have been able to learn a fraction of what they did if I approached a new topic/concept with the attitude of "I don't have confidence that you'll be able to read, or master these multiplication facts." In fact, my confidence in their ability often encouraged them to face new concepts where they initially lacked efficacy.   However, I believe that driving is different. My son is very confident in is abilities… perhaps overly confident for someone who has only had a license for a month!  My confidence in his driving is not only based on my experiences in the passenger seat with him as the driver, but also in research on cognitive development of 16-year-olds. Research indicates that 16-year old brains are not fully developed, especially the frontal lobe where executive functioning occurs.  The more experiences he obtains behind the wheel will lead to improved foresight and quicker reaction time, which equates to better overall driving abilities.  Research confirms. https://newsroom.aaa.com/2014/10/experience-matters-age-young-adult-driver-safety/

For now, I will continue my rule of “No passengers while driving.” https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192524 “Our data indicate that the risk of fatal injury for a 16- or 17-year-old driver increases with the number of passengers. This result supports the inclusion of restrictions on carrying passengers in graduated licensing systems for young drivers.”

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Reading Bandura’s article, Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited (2003), I learned that there are several ways to alter perceived self-efficacy. One way is to introduce a trivial factor devoid of any relevant information whatsoever but that can bias perceived self-efficacy. The higher the perceived self-efficacy is, the longer the individual will persevere on difficult and unsolvable problems. Another way to redirect means of influence and alter efficacy beliefs is to use observational means. Efficacy enhancement merely through observing models and visualization of threatening activities are ways to alter efficacy beliefs without the intervention of experiences. This is seen in Bandura’s experiment with the individuals who were terrified of snakes. The patients with snake phobia were helped more by observing other people with snake phobia and were learning to handle snakes, more than observing psychologists who were handling the snakes trying to verbally reassure the patients. Perceived self-efficacy is a strong predictor of coping behavior whereas anxiety and coping behavior essentially disappear when the influence of perceived self-efficacy is administered. 

One conclusion I found interesting: “Bogus information produces different levels of perceived self-efficacy, especially in corresponding changes in pain tolerance.”  The greater the change in perceived self-efficacy, the larger the change in pain tolerance!  The example provided in the article referred to physical pain, but I wonder, would this apply to emotional pain, or mental pain, or the pain of school demands or peer pressure? 

Bandura claims, “Children’s perceived efficacy to regulate their learning activities and master academic subjects raise academic aspirations and final grades independently of their prior grades in the subject matter and the academic aspirations the parents hold for their children.” If true, HOW could educators increase students’ perceived efficacy so that all children perform well?  How do we practically alter our classroom approach to help children achieve success? Even at a minimal level, what practical things can we do to draw them into the cycle of efficacy?  Bandura also states, “The higher a person’s self-efficacy and the greater their discontent with just matching their past performance, the higher their performance output.” For a person to perform at a higher level, a person must be motivated to perform at a higher level. What specific things can we do in the classroom to increase student efficacy?

Is how we understand experience a byproduct of our hierarchical world?

We've finally moved beyond just mere behaviorism, and added the layer of human experience to our discussions. Now, I think that this makes the discussion both a lot more cloudy, and a little clearer too in some ways. We spoke about how in a classroom setting, getting students to do something that we want them to as teachers isn't as simple as a knee-jerk response, like a puppy salivating when you ring a bell, or playing fetch for a treat. When what we want someone to do aligns with the holistic sum of their experiences, their self-efficacy to agree with what is being told to them is probably a bit higher. The notion of cognitive experience based on one's history that Bandura bases his arguments on teaches us that unlike dogs, the applications of behaviorism and operant learning on human beings are far more layered. Does this make Amy Sutherland's ramblings on the 'shamuing' of human beings a little too brash? I think that this is something definitely worth discussing.

The notion of the Ascending Reticular Activating System and heightened level of arousal do a lot to explain the power of experience in shaping our agreeability to do certain things, as well as the way in which we model our relationships with those who are considered to have a certain level of power. We need to understand that people do things not to drive us nuts on purpose. It's probably because they've experienced something in their lives that make them behave a certain way. Going back to my examples about being chastised for my hair and wearing uniform everyday to school, it probably explains my desire to constantly play around with the way I look, and my obsession with retail therapy. Just like Robin said in class, we try to understand other people's experiences, but we will always judge them in some way, because its hard to be objective. That's why she judges freshmen, just like I do. As someone who's studied psychology and is constantly told things like 'oh, you must be super neutral because you understand how all attributions come from somewhere', what I have to say to that is, well, it's hard to be completely objective, unless you detach yourself from everyone and everything. The life of an ascetic is super boring though.

Going forward from these arguments on neutrality, I recall the discussions about dynamic priorities that we had with Michael in our class last semester. Adults judge kids because of their capricious doings, but why? They had the same priorities when they were little, they just happened to grow up. The magnitude of their experience doesn't make them any better than their children. It's just the nature of their experiences that makes them think differently. This probably explains why my nan wouldn't take us seriously. She was quantifying experience rather than understanding that experience isn't about hierarchies, but rather about constant change and individuality. Maybe if we inculcate this notion of evaluating rather than quantifying experience in our children from an early age, it could combat the imbalance of power that pervades through society today. This is definitely something that is extremely hard to do, but one can hope. The internet definitely paves the way for such a world, where 'experts' don't exist, and everyone has free agency based on the nature of their experience.

Are we inspiring boys to higher self-efficacy than girls?

I stumbled across this Ted Talk by Reshma Saujani, founder of “Girls Who Code.” She seems to be referring to self-efficacy as bravery. I thought that some of her points relate to our discussions.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC9da6eqaqg (12 minutes)

                         

A few of her comments I found interesting:

“There’s a difference in how boys and girls approach a challenge: Boys with a high IQ were more likely to dig in and conquer, they found it challenging, while girls with high IQ were more likely give up.”

When the boys struggle, they say, “Professor, there’s something wrong with my code.”

When the girls struggle, they say, “Professor, there’s something wrong with me.”

“Most girls are taught to avoid failure, whereas boys are taught to take risks and are rewarded.  We are raising our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave.” 

“Men will apply for the job if they meet only 60% of the qualifications, and women won’t apply unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. This shows that we are raising our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave.” 

I am curious: Do educators encourage or inspire efficacy in male students more than female students? If so, then why??  Do any of you have a story or thought relating to this idea; something which supports or counters her claims?  I have more to add to my weekly blog… just throwing this out there for now. 

Why I Stop Nagging (Lecturing)

One of the chapter title from Sutherland, Why I Stop Nagging, took my thoughts to a classroom setting. I attempted to translate this like a teacher's talk: why I stop lecturing.

I used to joke to my colleague that lecturing is like the teacher's show which has nothing to do with the students. Of course, I talked too arbitrarily. However, long lecture is the most dangerous thing that can happen in the classroom. I see this more obvious with the behaviorist perspective. When someone is nagging, it is most likely all about the person self. It can be a beautify speech or bunch of out-of-control emotions. Humans are complex I have to admit, because somehow we learn to use verbal language, a seemly more precise way, to express ourselves. However, expression still doesn't guarantee communication or understanding from the audience. Nagging or a long lecture is so risky to loose the audience. This doesn't mean that some people cannot learn from a long lecture. Instead, this told me not to take the success of lecture-based teaching as granted. If it is a success, there must be the complexity on the students' side.

A Dilemma of Moral Self-Efficacy

Last week, we discussed the difference between effective reinforcement in the classroom and our concept of “justice”. I particularly was struggling with the hypothetical examples of bullying we discussed, and the fact that puritanical “punishment” of behavior does not work to truly stop bullying or any other negative behavior. In order for reinforcement to be effective, it will not always seem fair. Upon reflection, I realize that the reason I am still having such a hard time accepting this is because of how intensely I have been indoctrinated into puritanical classroom culture (quite literally, as I’ve attended private Christian schools my entire life until my first semester at OSU). The concept of redirecting a bully’s behavior to something positive and productive without addressing what they were doing wrong in the hope that they might learn the difference between right and wrong is SO foreign to me.

Therefore, when we were discussing the example of the teacher pulling the bully aside and giving them comics to analyze, I was dumbfounded as to how that wouldn’t be perceived as a reward for negative behavior. I understand conceptually that yelling at a bully or punishing them creates a loss of trust that may never be reforged between the bully and that teacher, and therefore won’t create a lasting change in the bully’s behavior. However, if you walked into a traditionally educated classroom where the students are primed with a justice-oriented mindset and reinforced a bully’s behavior in this way, you may have maintained the trust of the bully but potentially lost the trust of their victims. This is because the victims could see your behavior as unfair, prioritizing the bully’s reinforcement over the victims’ hurt feelings.

This leads me to believe that while this teaching tactic is truly the most effective for reinforcement of positive and productive behavior, it needs to start from the beginning of educational experience in order to be effective for the learning community as a whole. As we discussed in class, people learn from any and every interactive experience they have with others, so parents and teachers alike must implement such reinforcement from the beginning. Otherwise, we face having to re-train students from a mindset of justice-orientation.

However, this opens up a whole new can of worms: to what extent should we ignore teaching moral self-efficacy in the pursuit of an “effective” classroom environment? (I’m not sure this is the correct way of wording this conundrum, but it’s the closest I’ve got.)

Self-efficacy in quick decision making

After reading the posts for this week’s discussion, I was mulling over several ideas in my head and wasn’t sure which direction to take my own post. I decided to peek ahead to one of the readings for next week and was inspired, as I hoped I might be, by one of Bandura’s statements. He stated that “People fear and tend to avoid threatening situations they believe exceed their coping skills, whereas they get involved in activities and behave assuredly when they judge themselves capable of handling situations that would otherwise be intimidating.” For whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind was a time that I was babysitting and the little boy choked on a pistachio. Now, I had taken first aid and CPR courses, but if you had asked me that morning before babysitting about my level of self-efficacy for performing those maneuvers in an actual life or death emergency, I probably would have balked at the idea—it’s an intimidating prospect that I definitely would have said exceeded my coping skills. In the moment that little boy was choking, however, I was able to do exactly what I had learned in my first aid/CPR course to dislodge the pistachio from his airway. We hear stories like this in the news all the time, of the heroic bystander who just jumped to the aid of a stranger, but I wonder how self-efficacy is involved in these situations where you act with seemingly little thought. Obviously, we can make errors in our self-efficacy judgements, as Robin’s post about the skiers illustrates, but how does self-efficacy factor in when you have almost no time to make these judgements? Robin’s skiers had all their previous runs and rides up the chairlift to ponder and make an efficacy judgement about their ability to successfully ski a particular trail or not.

In my situation, the only prior knowledge I had to draw from was from an 8-hour course that I had taken at the age of 12. I had no real performance accomplishment or mastery, I had never seen someone else perform the Heimlich Maneuver in an actual emergency, no one persuaded me to act in that moment—except maybe Teddy, in his highchair turning purple—and I had no time to think about the stress of the situation. My sources for making a self-efficacy judgement (performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state) were not paid any attention. While Bandura highlights that contextual features of the environment matter in making self-efficacy judgements, I still am not sure how self-efficacy plays a role in quick decision making and behaviors, and we do this all the time. I may be looking at the concept from the wrong angle, so I’m interested in hearing what others think!

P.S.- Bandura also says, “even success experiences do not necessarily create strong generalized expectations of personal efficacy… When experience contradicts firmly established expectations of self-efficacy, they may undergo little change if the conditions of performance are such as to lead one to discount the import of the experience.” In other words, please don’t look at me if you’re choking… Still not wildly self-efficacious about life-saving!

Animal self-efficacy?

As I sit here trying to think of what to write in this post, my dog jumped up on my bed with a ball in his mouth, his way of telling me that it is time to play fetch. And as this class has been more of a behaviorism class rather than a self-efficacy class, I decided I'd run with this thought.

As with all dogs, we originally trained him to fetch by throwing the ball and then rewarding him with a treat whenever he brought it back to us. But since he enjoys fetch so much, we haven't had to reinforce him for bringing the ball back; he seems, and I'm probably giving him too much credit here, to intrinsically value the game itself, making the reward unnecessary. But other tasks/games we've tried to teach him, like running through obstacles at the dog park, which seem equally fun and which we rewarded just as often, he won't spontaneously try to engage in, like he does with fetch. I wonder if there is some sort of animal-equivalent of self-efficacy at play here, in that he is really good at fetch but not nearly as good at the obstacle courses. I would say, at a basic level, I'm wondering about the interaction of self-efficacy and operant learning and how this interaction plays out in educational settings.

Behavioral psychology plausible but unable to explain everything

Are all behaviors of animals acquired postnatally?Reinforcements (rewards)can boost the formation of certain behaviors but animals are able to learn without factitious stimulus. For example, the white mouse has psychological map and that is the internal mechanism how they assimilate or accommodate the outer environment. The white mouse still could form the route to escape from the maze without being rewarded grains. Behavior reinforcement might not be effective in all cases. Behaviorism provides us with a perspective to comprehend learning mechanism especially for non-human animals, such as habituation, classical conditioning and operant conditioning, which really exist. Moreover, these mechanisms could be explored, researched and optimized by scientific methods and plays an important role in the lives of animals. They play an important role in human beings’ daily life too, but is unable to explain everything. Wild animal trainer masters the techniques to train animals in a non-verbal way. Human uses similar way to train infants.

Behavior reinforcement could be mutual and interacted. In other words, we are shaped by the object we reinforce at the same time. Teachers learn that rewarding candies or stickers could make children listen to them. Children like candies and stickers, while teachers want regulation and obedience. Teachers train and shape children’s behavior purposely, but children shapes teacher naturally and unconsciously. In this case, who is the actual trainer? Which role do they play in reality? It seems that we are just obeying a certain rules which are doable and could temporary satisfy our needs, and we make it correct – fits the object truth – and continue doing it. Even though certainty create sense of safety, denial of objectivity, absolutism, immutability and invariability makes you deep.

Behavioral Transfer and Misaligned Self-Efficacy

So as I read peoples posts, I am intrigued by many things, and I think many people are bringing up some interesting ideas. I want to reply mainly to one thought that I felt connected two posts together.

My thinking connects to some points written by Kim and Loretta. Kim mentioned the importance of planning and environmental structuring in helping people to learn behaviors. I think her final statement hit the nail on the head. The environment is critical whether is it animal trainers, teachers or physical therapists, structuring an environment to support training and thus learning is crucial to success. As I read this, I thought about the challenge physical therapists struggle with, in getting people to transition the behaviors learned in therapy to the home environment. Which brought me to Loretta’s post, on self-efficacy and the four sources of information that contribute to self-efficacy.

The idea of performance accomplishments caught my eye. Loretta spoke of being able to get to the advanced trails and building up her self-efficacy for skiing through advancing to harder trails. No doubt was she to go again she would likely have an increased self-efficacy and may even start on a blue trail rather than a green. But what about when the environment is different. When her performance accomplishments don’t fit the new environment, yet she doesn’t see the misalignment. I saw this because (not to be dire), where I grew up skiing about 3 people died every year because they ski on trails that were well beyond their ability level. [for some reference where Loretta went skiing has a vertical drop of 300 feet, and the longest trail is .3 of a mile, where I grew up skiing has a vertical drop of 3,500 feet and the longest trail is 2.1 miles] A blue trail in one place is not the same as a blue trail in another. Thus their self-efficacy is misaligned with the situation, their performance accomplishments steer them wrong, and it is possible to end up badly hurt, or worse.

I feel that something similar could happen with physical therapy or even classrooms. What someone feels efficacious to do in one environment (i.e., the student support classroom, or the PT therapy room), may not actually be the same in a different environment (i.e., the classroom, or home environment). This makes me think about transferring behaviors to new situations and the potential it has to go wrong and cause a backslide. If you end up skiing a blue trail, that is much too hard for you, when previously you believed you could ski black diamonds, you might lose some of that efficacy and give up. Similarly, if you try to do something at home that you did under the guidance of your therapist and cannot do it, you may feel frustrated, and believe you cannot do it at all.
I don’t recall much in Sutherland’s book about transferring behaviors, but I am curious about the role of training, environment, and self-efficacy (particularly performance accomplishments) in behavioral transfer. What can be done to support behavior transfer without a loss of self-efficacy?

What's the key factors that facilitate people to change their mind?

I'm kinds of interested with the idea mentioned in  Johana's blog that the people would imitate people's behavior who they feel a strong emotional attachment with. The idea of brain wave seems beyond the reach of current educational psychology, but it may help to explain some inner mechanisms from biological perspective. In the same line, I've encountered with the idea of mimetic algorithm recently.  Like the genetic algorithm which functions in biological evolution, meme plays  a role of cultural genes that seek suitable places to grow for themselves. Human behavior and belief seem like their transmitting channel. In this sense, if a person confronts with two different types of meme in their belief system, how does he or she deal with that conflict? Examining this question from positive reinforcement perspective, it seems that the reinforcement could be the catalyzer in a chemical reaction. But what's the conditions of this behavioral change? Such as the strength of the reinforcement and the time of exposing it.

Another issue is that we have talked a lot about students' behavioral changes, but the question that why adults are easily annoyed by children's misbehaviors lacks of deep exploration. It seems that the interaction between adults and children depends on the choices from adults. There exists imbalance between different powers. I'm questioning that whether this relationship could be modified or how to consider inner mechanisms behind this imbalanced interaction.

Planning on Purpose

At the risk of sounding way too cute given our discussion of training marine life, I am, indeed, a fish out of water in this course.  Michael commented that I was quiet initially in the discussion this week.  This is multi-factorial:

1.     The coffee that made me late had not kicked in.

2.     My typical learning environment is very different from the one utilized in this course.  I am learning how to learn in a new classroom structure.  My bias is to observe first, talk later when something is new.

3.     I am pursuing a specialization in college teaching as an extension of my PhD requirements.  While I am an expert in the field of pediatric physical therapy, I am a novice when it comes to education.  Again, with all the new…I tend to listen first and speak second.

These factors established, I will attempt to superficially explore a remark made during the conversation this week.  When discussing my husband’s errant parking, I offered a strategy for correcting his behavior.  (“Correcting” is the precise term here rather than “changing”.  He was, after all, wrong.)  Michael remarked that I was suggesting a planned scenario when really I needed to wait for the desired behavior to occur, then reinforce it.

This is the point that I have been considering.  Given that I am unfortunately ignorant within this realm, I did not have much to say in real time on the matter.  But, I am ready to toss out some thoughts.  I look forward to correction on these points as needed.

At first, I was wondering if the distinction being made was that when training behavior, we wait.  When training for learning, we plan.  When I have my PT hat on, I have a treatment plan for a session and overall plan of care.  When I have my teacher hat on, I have a syllabus and lesson plans.  Is it different when it comes to behavior?  I am going to suggest that it is not.

When it comes to professional marine life animal trainers, Sutherland describes extensive binders of training plans (Sutherland, 2008).  Trainers break down behavior into approximations that move from basic to complex as animals learn desired skills.  While there is an element of waiting for the desired behavior to occur, this process is far from being without a plan.  Trainers are setting up an environment in which those approximations are very likely to occur.  In fact, they are also setting up circumstances where undesired behaviors are impossible to occur.  Planning and anticipating are critically important to the process of behavior training.

I found a statement that connects the trainers’ strategy with teaching humans.  “Establishing the appropriate classroom environment facilitate[s] student learning and engagement” (Peer & Martin, 2005).  This statement includes the three elements that I am considering here: (1) behavior in the form of engagement; (2) learning; and (3) planning, which is the work needed to establish the environment.  There is clearly interplay between teaching and learning, which involves intentional planning.

The following excerpt further illustrates the need for careful planning by teachers to support all students in their learning process:

"Consequently, it is essential that teachers scaffold the development of students’ self-efficacy and skill development in self-regulating their learning, as part of classroom instruction. A key challenge for teachers, therefore, is to translate self-regulated learning theory into classroom practice which engages all learners, including the least confident and motivated." (Fletcher, 2016)

While I cannot as a therapist, parent, wife, or teacher force behavior to occur, I can intentionally plan environments and circumstances that make desired learning and behavior very likely to occur.

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Fletcher, A. K. (2016). Exceeding expectations: scaffolding agentic engagement through assessment as learning. Educational Research, 58(4), 400–419.

Peer, K. S., & Martin, M. (2005). The Learner-Centered Syllabus: From Theory to Practice in Allied Health Education. The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, 3(2).

Sutherland, A. (2008). What Shamu Taught Me about Life, Love, and Marriage. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.