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?