Apparently, I have been living under a rock, and I need to climb out, so I figured this was a safe place to do it. Personally, I felt that I had crawled out of my "little box" a long time ago, so while I may not be "see[ing] something cool" or getting on board with someone else's view of "how class is meant to be" (which is a discussion for another day), I feel plenty efficacious to learn new ideas and information and blend them with my existing knowledge. I mean last week I sat in class debating about theories that as of 3 years ago I had never heard of. So I clearly, I have some confidence in my knowledge and learning abilities, and some efficacy to voice my feelings and opinions in class.
That brings me to what I want to talk about here. I could not help but think about the generalizability of efficacy as I read these posts. It is quite clear that given the strong connection between experience and self-efficacy that generalizability is tough. Mastery experiences do not always carry over to new settings, which is some I have brought up before in thinking about efficacy transfer and scaring Michael away from skiing forever. Thus, while some people have the self-efficacy to debate and argue in person, others may only have the efficacy to do it through typing. In fact, that is one of the huge issues with cyberbullying, is that people have the efficacy to do things online that they would never do in person. This got me thinking about why self-efficacy is easier to build in an online setting. It is that mastery experiences are easier to come by? Since people can't physically argue back, does that make it easier to feel like you have succeeded? Or perhaps is it related to vicarious experiences, in seeing videos, and posts go viral, does that make people think theirs will do the same? Maybe seeing Ryan's strongly opinionated posts get read in class impacted the self-efficacy of others? I am not the technology expert here, and I am generally curious about building self-efficacy in online settings versus in person. I personally am happy to debate and argue in person or online (ya'll should have figured that out by now), I like debates (dare I say I value them?), and I think they provide opportunities to learn, but clearly, I also have some efficacy in my abilities to engage in heated discussion. And even though last class, there were times when I felt like I lost, as Michael shot my ideas down, I will happily do it again. I think there is value (dirty word I know!) in thinking about other theories, about debating and finding connections between ideas. But perhaps this is only because I have had positive experiences doing so in the past. Nevertheless, while I am by no means an expectancy-value theorist, nor do I think SRL is everything, I do think just thinking about efficacy expectations doesn't do it for me. As Bandura himself said in his 1986 article The explanatory and predictive scope of self-efficacy theory "[the] mandate that perceived self-efficacy must exceed all other predictors of performance accords neither with self-efficacy theory nor with what is known about the dynamic operation of causal determinants."
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ReplyDeleteHey Robin, thanks for responding. I'm glad you feel you have the efficacy to respond in class, and I also appreciate that you reached out to me via email to try and dispel the discomfort I might have felt last class. However, I do not feel that you tried to blend the information that Michael was giving us last class with your own as you kept rebutting by saying that persistence cannot lead to value, and that it has to be the other way round. How is this trying to integrate a new theory into your existing ken of knowledge? While you may think that efficacy expectations don't explain a lot of things, the point of this class it to learn about the possibilities it has, not to shoot it down by trying to put it at odds with other things.
ReplyDeleteI hope that I didn't offend you, as you seem a little triggered (lol)
Also, while I may have butter fingers on the internet, I can definitely argue in class, it's only when people around me want to hear what I have to say, which I didn't seem to feel from you last class, because you seemed very squared into your own thoughts rather than wanting to value a sound argument. Hope this clarifies things :)
ReplyDeleteShantanu, you bring up here once again an important point that I didn't touch on in my post but wanted to, and connect to a point I already made. The first is perceptions, you seem to talk a lot about your perception of my behavior, your perception of how class was, your perception of me being triggered which you found humorous. All of that is well in good but it is your perception, my perception and that of others if very different. And when it comes to my behavior, it is my perception, my self-efficacy that matters. I perceived last class was a time to think about the relation between theories, and to not get boxed into just thinking about one. However, it is quite clear your perception was rather different. In fact your perception of me and my behavior, impacted your own efficacy more than it impacts mine. Your lack of efficacy to speak up in class came from your perception of my behavior. I did not feel squared away, or unable to see another way, in fact I like rebutting, I like pushing back even when I see holes in my argument. You keep saying that you perceive I am not in this class to learn, but I perceive it very differently. Thus your perception of my behavior impacts your efficacy and your behavior. Similarly in a classroom it is likely the efficacy of the individual that matters more than the teachers perceived efficacy...though those two things do interact. I think there is an interesting point here in that perception can often impact self-efficacy more than reality, which is shown in the studies that have people perceiving their self-efficacy to be different than their actual performance. I think it is important to remember that all efficacy judgements are made based on perceptions of our experiences and the environment. But I also think it is important to remember that our perceptions of things are rarely the same as those of others.
ReplyDeleteExactly, which is why you insinuate that people who can type can't argue and feel discomfort in class, which is probably your perception of me :), which may not be true hehe, because I just wanted you to hear me out. Also, I didn't say what I said just because I thought you wouldn't want to hear me out. I remember looking at you (and Ryan) many times last class to try and raise a point about how the two things we are discussing are different, only to receive no response from you that was thoughtful really, except that EVT holds true (maybe in your perception) so I'm not getting in your head, I'm only stating my observations :P. If you didn't catch that, I'm sorry, maybe I'll be a little forceful next time.
ReplyDeleteLike you yourself have said earlier, we can't be objective with respect to our 'perceptions' and they will never match up with one another, so while your little rant is very extensive haha, it's pretty self-explanatory Robin. Your problems with my perceptions are not my problems, they are your problems with my perceptions, like you yourself have said in your post.
Also, my lack of efficacy last class didn't come from my perception of your behavior, it just came from the fact that the argument was going nowhere.
ReplyDelete"I like pushing back even when I see holes in my argument." you may love doing this, but is it benefitting the people around you? This class is about shared purpose, and not your own perceptions. I'm not bothered as to whether people perceive whether it is about that or not Robin, the very fact is that it is. Sorry for the flood of comments. I just need some time to read a large paragraph and deconstruct how I can respond. The online bully (again, your possible perception of me) works hard. Also I really appreciate that we're doing this, it goes to show how online environments do develop better collective efficacy.
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