Indecision & Self-Efficacy. Technology Implementation Anxiety.

Today, I read an article about the connection between indecision and perceived self-efficacy. Indecision is defined as the inability to make decisions. Based on our discussions about efficacy originating from successful experiences, I presume that people who struggle with indecision can be explained to have low self-efficacy in decision making. Does a student who perpetually struggles with indecision, affects their educational performance, especially student assessments.  Would the same reasons student struggles in decision making affect the outcome of their class assessments?  Specifically, I’m considering that people who struggle making decisions consume more time choosing between different alternatives and use very little effective decision-making strategies. These people submit a high cognitive effort into making decisions and feel threatened by ambiguous situations. Perhaps indecision would not affect an objective subject such as mathematics, but what about in a subjective class, such as writing a persuasive paper?  Does indecision lead to perfectionism, meticulous effort, and better student performance? Or does indecision hinder growth, experimentation and exploring new ideas in learning because students fear failure (assuming the indecision is rooted in fear of failure). Case in point: Despite having sat down several times this week to write this weekly post, I struggled with this howto contribute. I was indecisive. Last week’s class notes were minimal and did not spur many questions. 

One topic that piqued my interested was the brief consideration of teacher implementation of technology in the classroom. We agreed that although many teachers like the idea of utilizing more technology in their classroom, many educators have anxiety with the reality of making use of it.  I have been considering, “Why?” Why does the implementation of technology create anxiety in teachers, and how can teacher efficacy improve in using technology? First, I presume there are challenges for adequate professional development for educators. Consequently, those who are required to integrate new technology into their classroom feel unprepared and untrained in implementation. Lack of training would directly affect efficacy. Second, I wonder if there is a gap between the vision of delivering personalized instruction and the technologies available to educators. I am sure there are additional reasons teachers have anxiety about implementing technology, thus keeping them in the bottom right quadrant we discussed in class. Perhaps I will further explore teacher anxiety and technology…