Analyzing what Pajares says a bit better, and talking about 'the system'

It really fascinates me to look at how the progression of the readings has led us to seek the answers that we need. Heated arguments regarding expectancy value theory, while valid, were clarified by a more detailed analysis of Pajares, which was really essential to understand why expectancy value theory is something that falls short on explaining how we self-regulate. While Bandura has an extremely process oriented outlook towards motivation and how it can paresis through pwrevious success and cultivate stronger efficacy, EVT talks about how interest, value and intrinsic importance are things that cultivate motivation. EVT often expounds that intrinsic motivation is the be all and end all of success. But, can we achieve mastery classrooms by saying that we need to work with already developed social cultural value systems that may form the basis of the drives contained within the EVT framework? Aren't such aspects better explained in a more process oriented, domain specific fashion?

In my personal opinion, self-efficacy flips EVT on its head in.order to help us understand how success is what drives motivation. Not an abstract conception of something like value or interest, because honestly, you can’t get in anyone’s head. I think it tells us to ask the correct questions and question our choices when we make mistakes, thus providing for a more specific background framework if you will, for the cultivation of self-regulation. While I'm not saying that 'mastery' is the be all and end all of things, what I do have to say that it is (sadly but truly) neglected in today's classrooms because we have turned into a 'grading society'. There needs to be a balance, like Bandura says there could be, but warns us to edge on the side of intrinsic motivation and mastery.

While the distinction between EVT and Bandura’s theory is murky, as Pajares says, I think that the main difference lies in how global EVT tends to be in its quest to explain how we evaluate ourselves. To each theorist their own, but I feel that when we talk about ‘mastery’, a careful understanding of what initial success looks like is extremely important. In a ‘grading society’, I think that we’re focusing more on what is expected os us than being learners. This links back to the 'anxiety' associated with education act we have created as a byproduct of society today. Michael said that a pendulum swings pretty fast though. It's true! It's time interval, by actual theory is 1s.  This is precisely why it’s so blatantly easy to throw around the term ‘mastery’ with such ease, and turn around and butcher it with grades and numbers.

The flip side is of course, also a possibility, with. us turning around and breaking the system, much like Habermas's notion of breaking down civil discourse in order to create new paradigms for the social good. While this may result from a more instrumental outlook towards reflection, I feel that it paves the way for higher self-efficacy and mastery experiences in varied domains, while giving us the freedom to still be happy about the extrinsic rewards that we are obsessed with in a 'grading society'. While this goes back to the notion of privilege, I think that we're missing the point by not looking at the possible benefits such a system could have because we are buried within the vicarious influence that society undeniably has on us.

Does a decrease in unstructured "play" affect self regulated learning?

The past few days, I have been thinking about opportunities for younger children to learn self-regulation skills… specifically, how this current generation of children are experiencing a completely different childhood than their parents and grandparents. In class this evening, I was considering appropriate expectations for younger children to set their own goals. I was pondering various developmental stages of students and appropriate ways teachers should integrate self-regulating skills into the curriculum, knowing how much to expect from their age/development stage of students. 

I recently read an article about the lack of opportunity for today’s children to engage in unstructured “play.” The article discussed the effect of a lack of unstructured playtime on children learning self-regulation skills.  To be defined as true “play” time, it must be self-directed, done with no outside reward, have some type of rules or structure, and have an element of imagination. According to the article, American children spend an average of 4-7 minutes a day on unstructured play. These numbers are unbelievable!  Over the past 40-50 years, there has been a shift in parental attitudes which have affected parental focus; specifically, the idea of uninhibited, unstructured “play” has become a negative concept that implies a large waste of a child’s time. I have observed the current generation of parents under heavy social pressure to structure children’s playtime and provide more and more adult-guided activities and competitive opportunities to “become the best.” Today’s parents often feel a burdensome responsibility for their children’s development and guilt over allowing their children to “waste time” exploring unstructured personal activities that lack a specific purpose.  Interestingly, research points to the opposite: A 2018 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics* confirms that “play” enhances creativity, imagination, dexterity, boldness, teamwork skills, stress-management skills, confidence, conflict resolutions skills, decision-making skills, problem-solving skills, and learning behavior.

I hypothesize that the increased focus away from unstructured play time has led to a decline in youngsters’ opportunities to experience self-regulated learning, resulting in lower self-efficacy in social and academic arenas. Unstructured “play” provides children the opportunity for problem-solving, collaboration and creativity require the executive functioning skills that are critical for adult success. Universities are seeing an increased number of students who lack coping skills for dealing with bumps in the road of life; presumably lacking self-efficacy and self-regulation skills needed to persevere through increased academic and social demands. 

Yes, educators should be intentional with activities, games, and purposeful modeling of self-regulated learning in their classroom… but I wonder how much of the issue stems from competitive societal pressures placed on parents to produce the “best, most successful” child in the school? 

            *https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/3/e20182058#ref-128

Mastery and Privilege

I think our discussion of privilege and self-efficacy actually relates to our understanding of mastery-oriented education. The American education system prides itself on meritocratic ideals, using tools like testing as a seemingly unbiased measure of academic standard. People can assume that passing classes and acing tests means that a student has mastered the subject content, when it is entirely possible that they have instead mastered the classroom system. Privilege may be a factor in what allows this distinction to be overlooked.

For example, each class has a set of requirements, such as attendance, participation, assignment completion, and test-taking. At the most basic level, it is possible to pass a class by completing these objectives without truly mastering or fully understanding the topics and their implications, thus passing by way of performance goal orientation. This follows an efficiency model, as it can take less effort to simply regurgitate the information that the teacher expects rather than wrestling with the concepts and critically evaluating them. Therefore, this method is often rewarded not only in the academic realm, but also in real-world situations. Efficiency allows for conservation of time and resources that can thus promote productivity for other projects, a mindset and practice highly encouraged in capitalism.

In this case, the external rewards increase an individual’s self-efficacy in mastering the efficiency system, thus achieving success. However, these rewards are disproportionately given when privilege comes into play. Those who are underprivileged in some way and who follow the efficiency method may be deemed as “lazy” and “cutting corners” as opposed to “prolific” and “vigorous”. These people more often may have to prove true content mastery to receive the same perceived merit as their privileged counterparts and thus the same reward. They may also feel less efficacious in their mastery, as they are more often questioned and scrutinized in their fields of expertise.

Especially in light of the recent indictments surrounding money laundering and college admissions, this discussion of privilege, self-efficacy, and mastery needs to be taken further.

It's a Big Environment Out There

Idea 1:
I am working on a systematic review looking at developmental assessments of cognitive and motor skills for young children born with congenital heart disease (CHD).  It is known that developmental delay is more common in this population compared with typically developing peers without CHD, but researchers are working to understand what factors are associated with variability in developmental trajectory and how to maximize development potential for this population of children.

In the reading that I am doing for this review, I have been impressed that the most prominent predictors for developmental outcome for this group of children are mostly unrelated to their heart condition.  Maternal education, overall socioeconomic status, publicly funded health insurance, growth and oral feeding skills (which are more related to the health of the child in many cases) are associated most with the cognitive, language and motor development of children with CHD.  By and large, number of surgical procedures, intraoperative strategies, birth history, and heart anatomy are not significantly correlated with developmental skills.

Idea 2:
A kiddo is 7 months old, has been hospitalized nearly 3 of those 7 months, does not take oral feeds, was born prematurely and with other risk factors, and has hypotonia.  He not only is at risk for delay, but has established global developmental delay already.  He has had a difficult time receiving support services due to social challenges, as well as repeated hospitalizations.  Health concerns continue to trump developmental concerns.

Idea 3:
I think about resource access often when I think about the children to whom we have provided foster care and have been reunified with family members.  We get to know these children.  I can't help but to set some goals for what I would like to work on while we are caring for them.  We see progress and potential, but it requires concerted effort, time, and resources.  We also recognize the desire to parent coming from biological families, but appreciate the desperate situation that they are often living in.  The limitation of resources does not afford them the luxury many times to do more than "good enough" to get by.  That is not a judgement of their person, but a reality of poverty or unsupported mental health disorders or broken family structure or whatever the case may be.  Although we have always felt confident that the children were going to a safer situation than the one they were removed from, it was always clear that the environment was a starkly different one from our home environment.

Resolution:
I was impressed by: (1) Arianna's post about knowing what children can actually do, and (2) Lin's comment about self-regulation being a trait or skill or both.  If an environment is such that children are unable to use their skills, build upon them, and continue a strong developmental trajectory, what are we supposed to assess and intervene upon?  If I evaluate the child with CHD or the child with repeated hospitalizations or the child living in a challenging social situation and they are found to have motor delays, should my intervention be aimed more directly upon that child or the environment and the parent?  Are the caregivers even able to handle having one more someone talk to them about anything because they are just so beyond their capacity to self regulate their current situation that having a PT in the mix does virtually nothing but make more chaos? Mastering a motor skill in the midst of a bigger environment is far more than the right dosing of my therapy intervention.  I have always known and respected this.  However, I am becoming more and more convinced that that bigger environment plays a bigger role than I may have ever considered in the past.

How to perceive relations between Individual, Education and Society under 'Self regulated learning' and 'Self-efficacy'

Based on my current understanding, I feel like self-regulated learning is a learning process that requires much effort to control one's own behavior in order to meet external requirements and standards. Even though it mentions lots of utilization of meta-cognition and self-awareness of both tasks and selves, the whole process of self-regulated learning still seems to focus on evaluating oneself so as to fulfill a role in society. However, self-efficacy is part of individuals' belief system which is mainly cultivated by successful experiences in specific domain. Similar to what Lin talks in her post, does the learning success caused by self-regulated learning really promote individuals' self-efficacy? Since considering one's belief system development, there might be many possible ways. In one direction, it might be influenced by external environments and the other direction it might be developed through using one's agency fully to shape external environments. I'm thinking that the possible role of human's agency in these two concepts. Do people could utilize their agency in adapting into existing educational and social system? 

For my parents' generation, most people would seek a permanent job and stay in a city for a life long time. But nowadays, people start moving from one city to another and change their jobs more frequently than the past generation. I'm thinking that how social structure would be affected by this increasing growth of human's fluidity no matter physically or psychologically. What functions of education shall be re-shaped by increasingly transparency of information? In the past, schools might probably the major place to acquire knowledge and information as well as function as a role to maintain existing social structure. However, with the development of information technology, people could obtain knowledge in a more effective way and they may play a role in re-shaping social structure. Thus, relating to individuals' agency and social development, what the role of education should be in the future? Does self-regulated learning meet people's or society's needs from the perspective of transformative learning? Or in what way, it differentiate from self-efficacy in the aspects of individuals' agency, educational purpose and social development?  

Know what you do, do what you know

Something that stood out to me from the Pajares article was his discussion that without the right tools (teachers, equipment, etc.) no amount of self-efficacy can compensate for the lack of adequate resources required to perform academic tasks. Although self-efficacy may be greater than demonstrated performance, “it is not so much a matter that students do not know what to do but rather that they are unable to do what they know.” According to Bandura, self-efficacy cannot impact or predict academic performance if social constraints and scarcity of resources prohibit performance in the first place. This made me think about culturally relevant practices in the classroom and valuing different ways of knowing, specifically in regard to assessment of learning. How might schools be more equitable, and how might we positively impact performance for all if we were better able to let students “do what they know” and assess that? If we aren’t measuring for mastery, I don’t know how we could expect students to be learning for mastery. However, this brings me to my next point, which questions how much we really value mastery in this society and how the purpose of education might affect mastery-oriented learning. 

In pondering the purpose of education, I think we have to ask about the purpose of education for whom, and then we can weigh how mastery, self-efficacy, and self-regulation play a role in education. If you consider, for example, the role of education as something crafted and orchestrated by the government to produce good little worker bees, then mastery is probably a less prominent goal for the majority of students (and teachers for that matter). Freire’s idea of banking education would align with the notion that education molds students who are well suited for the labor market and workforce demands, so perhaps if that is the purpose of education then they’ve succeeded. To be marketable in the workforce, to what extent can we embrace education for mastery? Are we at a point where jobs are the ultimate assessment of an education well done? Employment that provides a livable wage is harder to come by, and there is an emphasis on being well qualified, which usually means performing well in school to get there. Our society is performance oriented. I don’t think, however, that this is necessarily at the exclusion of having self-efficacy and self-regulation. Again, we have to ask what we are gaining self-efficacy for and who education is for.  

SRL and types of classrooms

Before any discussions should continue on the interplay of self-efficacy and self-regulation, I feel that it's important we make the distinction between "general" self-regulation and self-regulated learning (SRL). Self-regulation, as a general term, can refer to any number of behaviors that are aimed at helping someone reach a (usually self-generated) goal. SRL on the other hand, is a specific term that refers to several educational theories that propose that students engage in the learning process by setting goals, enacting strategies, monitoring their strategy use and progress towards a goal (making strategic changes when necessary) and finally reflecting upon their goal pursuit. And now I digress.

While I agree that it is much easier and likely to occur in contexts in which mastery-based, I think that SRL can occur in performance-based classes, depending on what students need to do in order to perform well in a class. Typically when we think of performance-based classes, we are talking about those "banking" ideas where students just need to take in a bunch of info and then spit it back out on an assessment. I agree it's far less likely that students will self-regulate their learning in this type of class, mostly because it is not necessary to do that when the grade is based on superficial knowledge. But if assignments are designed in a way that the performance (read:grade) is based on a deep understanding of content (think the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy), students can certainly self-regulate their learning in this type of environment, even if they are not doing so because they desire mastery or are judging their performance on their own standard. With the increasing importance of grades in schools, it's becoming harder to structure classrooms to be mastery-based and avoid the emphasis on performance. But I think that if assignments are structured in a way that necessitates deep learning and SRL, students will engage in these behaviors, eventually increasing their self-efficacy to engage in these behaviors, this process.

Basically, I just don't think it's as black-and-white as "Students can only self-regulate in mastery environments and not in other environments."

Innate Satisfaction and Reward are not symbiotic

Last class really made me think about privilege in a different way. We were talking about how setting proximal goals and doing something for the pure satisfaction of it could warrant for a higher chance of success as opposed to the presence of extrinsic rewards that allow other people to dangle motivation before us and define how we come to perceive success. What is this intrinsic motivation that we need on our way to the distal goals that we set for ourselves? Well, we need to say that the bottom line or the distal vision we see is something that comes from an innate desire to achieve it. While Bandura does say that intrinsic motivation is extremely important towards achieving something in the purest sense, he doesn't go as far as saying that feeling good from getting an extrinsic reward is wrong.

Now, we were talking about how these extrinsic rewards are what keep people who are miserable with their lives going. We were discussing how some people, who are fed up with their jobs or absolutely dissatisfied with their lives work for the money. But, then again, what if they're doing this for another end in view viz. supporting their family? That seems to look like something that borders along intrinsic motivation, but is fulfilled by extrinsic reward. We have to remember that Bandura doesn't say that wanting an extrinsic reward is absolutely wrong. All that he's saying is that these are not as long lasting, and may lead us to be like Amy Sutherland's new animal subjects, constantly desiring a simulated reward system.

All of this raises an extremely circular argument about how there is a web of interrelated phenomena within our lives that often vicariously dictate our actions within other realms. When we take this into perspective, however, we might understand that despite the fact that the desire for extrinsic rewards may link to another intrinsic end in view in another domain, the incidence of pure intrinsic drives leads to a better result. Someone doing a dissertation just to get it published may benefit from it initially, but how do we gauge whether the satisfaction they had while doing it affects how they use it later? In my personal opinion, we've come to teach students that they need to be sure of what they have to do to gain extrinsic rewards rather than have mastery experiences within the classroom. Most high school careers are fueled by reward systems. Maybe that's why, as educationists, we sometimes tend to put the mastery experience of critical reflection that theorists like Mezirow lament the lack of back in a corner.

I feel like whatever we spoke about last class really led me to think about why I am in this degree program. Am I in it for the money? No, the road is long and the effort is huge. But, does it bring me satisfaction? Maybe I have the privilege to do things for my satisfaction because of the background I come from. But, why would I ever want to let someone dangle a reward before me just for it to fade away within a short span of time? Wouldn't being innately satisfied with what I'm doing lead to a higher likelihood for me to succeed with both my proximal and distal goals, and use the incidental rewards to achieve my extrinsic goals?

What does Social Cognitive Theory say about Improving Self-Regulation?

In other occasions where we talked about improving students' self-regulation for academic success, we first had to take a position about to what extent we think self-regulation is a trait, or skill, or both. Then we talked about fostering self-regulation in a stand-alone program (e.g., a separate course) or integrating self-regulation into each subject matter learning. It is so promising if I believe there is a certain level of transferable self-regulation strategies across subject domain because in this way, we can expect a success in one scenario can lead to more successes in other scenarios. Self-regulation then can be a "trainable" skill and may eventually become a trait of a person.

Having read the literature of social cognitive theory and had discussion in Dr. Glassman's class, I think I need to be more careful and accurate about the arguments of the general term: self-regulation. Social cognitive theory explains self-regulation based on its assumption of human agency and its role in the triadic relationship between personal factors, environmental factors and behaviors.The core concept that is missed by me in the past is the exercise of control and personal agency. Not all the intentional regulatory behaviors are adaptive or good for building up self-efficacy. For example, cheating is a kind of regulatory behavior which is highly linked with performance-oriented classroom structure (see Dr. Eric Anderman's work). In the view of  social cognitive theory, this type of regulatory behaviors won't help build up self-efficacy of the subject domain. While one can be better and better at cheating if one never gets caught, cheating never won't take one closer to mastery goals. People who cheat won't experience the feeling of competent in the subject domain so it is likely that they won't continue the study or do relevant work in this domain when the extrinsic rewards are withdrew.

Another meaningful interaction with the literature is how theory links to the practice.

There are cautions that should be taken as regards the nature and focus of interventions to increase self-efficacy. As is presently the case with self-esteem, there is the danger that self-efficacy may soon come in a kit. Bandura's (1986) emphasis that enactive attainment is the most influential source of self-efficacy information has important implications for the self-enhancement model of academic achievement which contends that, to increase achievement, educational efforts should focus on raising students' feelings of self-worth or of competence. This is usually accomplished through programs that emphasize building self-beliefs through verbal persuasion methods. Social cognitive theory shifts that emphasis and focuses on a joint effort to raise competence and confidence primarily through successful experience with the performance at hand, through authentic mastery experiences. Interventions should be designed accordingly (Pajares, 1996, 569)

I agree that fostering self-regulation should aim at fostering self-regulation for efficacious experience. Goal setting, planning, time management, reading and writing strategies, and the like should be modeled not for the sake of themselves (e.g., "Top five tips for college students") but for giving students' successful experience. When we model effective self-regulation, we should model effective self-regulation that can help students to see the intrinsic value of the tasks/subject rather than the technique itself. That is what we touched on during the class discussion: fostering self-efficacy or self-regulation is through process (providing experience for students) instead of product (equipping skills to students).

I like how Dr.Glassman in the class pointed out that "deep" strategy use or more efforts only when one is intrinsically motivated. This goes back to a quote from Zimmerman (2000)  I like to cite in the past with better understanding this time:

"self-regulatory skills are of little value if a person cannot motivate themselves to use them" (p. 17)

Now I have a bunch of new questions that I hope we can talk about in the future class:

• How do we as teachers balance between pre-defined syllabus and self-set goals?
• If one is novice in the subject domain, how can we help students to self-set goals?
• Why do some students like "well-structured" course? This is common in online courses (my interest). Students are like "I need to know specifically what to do."

References
Pajares, F. (1996). Self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. Review of educational research, 66(4), 543-578.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). Academic Press.

Relations between Domain and Situational factors, Belief system and Outcomes

Inspiring by Pajares's (1996) paper, I began to think about how to clarify human beings' different belief systems based on domain and contextual conditions, including self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-concept, and expectancy of outcome or value. From Bandura's point of view, self-efficacy seems to be more domain-specific and it is highly situational. However, Pajares mentioned that for self-concept, it would be more domain-general and people might hold more stable beliefs toward themselves no matter the outcomes turn out to be a failure or a success. This makes me re-think about Bandura and Cervone's (1983) statement on the relations between self-efficacy, self-evaluation and motivational effects. For domain-specific tasks, the standards or the goals are set mostly by teachers and schools as also mentioned by Arianna. Would this influence students' development of self-efficacy? I'm considering that whether the adoption of external goals or assessment standards would shift students' belief systems towards more object-oriented direction, such as others' judgment or evaluation, rather than beliefs on themselves' competencies in locus of control.

While, for more domain general self belief systems,  there might be more influential factors apart from academic learning contexts, such as activities in family life, communities, or other social activities. I'm thinking about what situational factors could be in influencing individuals' other belief systems, such as self-esteem, self-concept, value and outcome expectancy.  And how those beliefs interact with more domain-specific self-efficacy belief? 

As for learning outcomes, currently most research focus on the cognitive achievement. However, many non-cognitive traits seems to be neglected, such as perseverance, self-discipline, communication skills, empathy, and social responsibility. What's the role of our school systems play in cultivating those capabilities through domain-specific learning methods and distinct contexts? And how could schools interact with more broader contexts together so as to enhance individuals' belief system more holistically?  

The role of dissatisfaction

I was so intrigued by the finding from Bandura & Cervone (1983) that self-dissatisfaction is predictive of performance change. The more dissatisfied individuals were with their performance, the more they improved their subsequent performance. So often we assume that success breeds success, when that is not entirely the case. This is in line with an idea from a few weeks ago that I initially found counterintuitive, which is that prior successful performance does not always predict future participation or successful performance. With this in mind, how can we optimize the negative discrepancies between standards and performance so that students are motivated? Bandura and Cervone stated that perceptions of efficacy to attain self-set standards influence whether people are motivated or discouraged by negative discrepancies. I wonder, however, how self-efficacy and motivation are influenced when the standards are set by others. In the school setting, standards of performance are determined by politics, school officials, teachers, parents, and peers. How does this influence standards that students then adopt for themselves? One area I thought the study left room for exploration on was the influence of feedback about how a peer or multiple peers had performed on the task. Since that would be more similar to conditions in the school or classroom setting, it may reveal something about how performance standards are influenced by others. A student may be satisfied with his or her performance initially, for example, but dissatisfied if told how peers performed. In the real world, there are multiple channels from which we receive feedback about performance and our initial perceptions about a performance can change when we receive more information.  

Como se dice self efficacy?

I was new to San Antonio as a recently licensed physical therapist a year into marriage.  I worked in an inpatient rehabilitation unit in a level 1 trauma center, meaning I worked with many individuals following spinal cord injury or traumatic brain injury for months until they were ready to transition to home.  Because this was southern Texas, I worked with many Spanish-speaking individuals.  As a new therapist, I was still learning how to communicate with patients effectively in English, let alone Spanish, of which I knew essentially none.  When you work with someone daily for several months, the relationship dynamic importantly sets the tone for sessions, which last about 90 minutes.  My point is…it’s good when you can communicate with your patients.

So, I did what I could to engage with Spanish speakers.  “Como se dice…” and then I would gesture or act out the term I was lacking.  They would oblige and tell me (usually) the correct term and we would move forward with our Spanglish conversation.  In a 90-minute session, I likely said, “Como se dice…” 70 times.  It was my only fluent phrase.  So, it should come as no surprise that in the middle of one night, deeply dreaming, I (reportedly) sat straight up in bed, turned to my new husband, and shouted, “Como se dice…” and followed with an opening and closing of my hand, as though a duck’s bill.  “Duck?” Andy replied, likely disturbed.  “Oh, yeah.”  Lay back down.  End scene.

Understanding requires communicating in the same language.  This is true across cultural lines, but also when considering the study of theoretical concepts.  In my own research, there is emerging literature about the concept of intervention fidelity, the extent to which a prescribed intervention is carried out in the manner in which it was intended.¹ The study of this concept is difficult because factors that contribute to fidelity are described by so many words that seemingly are being described in the same-ish manner: adherence, engagement, compliance, competence, enactment, implementation.  Each researcher has an idea of the construct they are trying to understand, but developing a body of knowledge, where clear relationships are defined is complicated by, perhaps, a vocabulary issue.

This seems to be occurring when trying to understand motivation and behavior in an academic setting.  With the development of various constructs and conceptualizations, so has come a list of terms to understand and define: task-specific self-concept, self-concept of ability, expectancies, expectancy beliefs, expectancy for success, performance expectancies, perceptions of competence, perceptions of task difficulty, self-perceptions of ability, ability perceptions, perceived ability, self-appraisals of ability, perceived control, subjective competence, and confidence.² While it may be indicated to use different terms for subtly different constructs, this number of terms presents an overwhelming challenge when trying to understand complicated human motivation and resultant behavior.  Clear, common language and definitions of constructs would improve the ability to validate assessment and define relationships, a challenge with regard to self efficacy in relation to other expectancy beliefs.²

The solution seems to find a common language and use that common language to test ideas about these constructs in rigorous ways.  In this way, relationships can be better defined and understanding enhanced.

Como se dice self efficacy?

1. Toomey E, Hardeman W. Addressing Intervention Fidelity Within Physical Therapy Research and Clinical Practice. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2017;47(12):895-898. doi:10.2519/jospt.2017.0609

2. Pajares F. Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Academic Settings. Review of Educational Research. 1996;66(4):543-578.

Efficacy in thinking critically and analytically

When it comes to critical-analytical thinking, one needs to accumulate knowledge, beliefs, skills and strategies which are required to think critically and analytically. In other words, hight effort thinking required deep information processing in mind, and it tends to be slow, controlled, and limited capacity mode that often demands more effort.

We could think in a effortless way without concerning the potential or upcoming result, but the faster we come out the solution, we have more efficacy in this decision making process. We are not that sensitive to losses but use promotion-focused strategeis and eagerly seek opportunities for gains in this case. When one quickly comes up with an answer based on an automatic association between the problem and some solution, the processing was rapid, automatic, and high capacity mode that requires relatively little effort. But it is more likely to float at the surface which require low effort thinking. 
Most of time, people gernerally allow themselves to be guide by impressions and feelings, and the confidence they have in their intuitive beliefs and preferences is usually justified. It reminds me of my talk with Micheal focusing on my present research interest. I exemplified several broad topics and merely explained personal ideas simply within one or two sentences, which makes Micheal confusing, for I just wandered aroung the surface level withouth providing clear demonstration out of my thoughts. Then I realized that I did not develop the ability to scratch the surface and explore deeper. In other words, I transfer the information instumentally rather than tranformatively. Ideas out of critical and analytical thinking which belongs to me was drowned in parrot-learned knowledge. Most of times I would extremely admire others who had firmly choose one road and dig in depth. However, compared with them, I lack sufficient requiring mind and spirit and have lower efficacy in critical and analytical thinking. People would be simply satisfied with a smattering of knowledge if they do not scrutinize the idea in various aspects.

SE, Cognition and Self-Regulating Capabilities

This is my third week teaching Spanish 1 and 2 at a local high school, while their "real" teacher is on maternity leave. After grading quizzes last week, I noticed a 26% difference in average quiz scores between two classes (6^thperiod=61% and 7^thperiod=87%). Not surprisingly, quiz scores seemed to generally correlate with quarter grades. I wondered WHY such a huge disparity. 6^thperiod: sweet kids, good attitudes, energetic, talkative, interested in participating, but not really interested in being challenged or performing well. 7^thperiod: very quiet, studious and interested in getting the right answers.  I could speculate that 6^thperiod has lower self-efficacy than 7^thperiod.  In what practical ways can I help 6^thperiod students increase self-efficacy?   I see the dynamics of negative collective efficacy play out on a daily basis. 

I have found it interesting to tie my recent experiences to Bandura’s article, “Perceived Self-Efficacy in Cognitive Development and Functioning."  Students who regard themselves as highly efficacious attribute their failures to insufficient effort. Students who receive a low-grade know they can achieve a better grade, quickly decide they should have put more effort into studying or asking for help in preparing.  The students will exert greater effort when faced with challenges. Alternatively, those who regard themselves as inefficacious attribute their failure to low ability.  Students who receive a low grade believe they could not have received a higher grade and ultimately conclude that they have low ability.  These students slacken their efforts or give up quickly in the face of adversity. Bandura suggests that educators are responsible to teach students self-regulatory capabilities to educate themselves.  

I would like to better understand the specific self-regulating capabilities. Bandura suggests that it is an educator’s professional responsibility to equip students with self-regulating skills that help students educate themselves. “The higher the students’ self-regulatory efficacy, the ore assure they were to master academic subjects.”  If self-regulation refers to our ability to manage our energy, emotions, attention, and behavior in ways that are socially acceptable and help us to achieve our goals, then what specific ways should educators help students grow in these areas? I might offer the following suggestions: creating a positive environment, clarify expectations on schedules/procedures, scaffolding academic material, modeling appropriate behavior ahead of time, and discussion/reflection of past behaviors. I would love to hear additional practical suggestions. 

My school’s intervention program has had great success in recent years, partnering with struggling students on an individual basis.  They are experts at helping students to identify & take ownership of their own weaknesses, by giving them tools to learn in the face of challenges, and teaching them how to advocate for themselves.  In my opinion, all students should have a similar type of guidance/encouragement.   Intentional, positive reinforcement is impactful. Similar to the intervention department’s model, teachers could be intentional to meet with students individually, sharing insights they see in the students’ performance; strengths and weaknesses; providing an opportunity to address concerns/struggles from the student and offer tools that would assist that student in that specific class. 

I am interested to discuss Bandura’s thoughts on Self-Efficacy with respect to cognition… and ideas on helping students to learn self-regulating capabilities. 

Why the scope of our self-efficacy beliefs is important to understand self-efficacy?

I found Pajares’ article interesting because it explained how self-efficacy (SE) differs from other expectancy constructs, like motivation and self-concept, and provided ideas on how SE should be assessed. I think that these are topics that have fired up the discussions in our class. From my understanding, one distinctive feature of SE is that it is not only domain specific, but also task specific. Therefore, if we want to measure students’ SE in math domain through a questionnaire, the questions should specify both the content of the domain (e.g., algebra) and the type of task (e.g., problem-solving approach). However, I could not understand the theoretical reason of this level of specificity. I think that the author emphasized more how SE should be operationalized than why SE should be understood in that way. Though both things (i.e., operationalization and definition) should be related, they are not the same. I wonder if the theoretical reason is related with the fact that solving a task in a particular domain requires more than the knowledge about that domain. In the previous case, for example, the student not only needs to know about algebra, but also she needs comprehension skills to understand the problem.

Pajares’ article also helped me to understand what Professor Glassman calls microanalytic assessment. This author discussed the relevance of understanding SE associated to a specific domain and a specific task. But what about the role of time? From our discussion in class, I understood that one’s SE beliefs are affected by the environment. Therefore, it is possible that the strength of these beliefs varies over time, right? 

Self-Efficacy and Relationships, thinking about a personal research interest.

I know we have been talking about collective efficacy, but recently I have been curious about the connection between relationships and self-efficacy particularly in classroom settings. However, despite my strong feelings that these things are related I have struggled to find research that explores these two concepts. In knowing that close teacher-student relationships and close peer relationships are significantly related to positive school outcomes (school liking, behavioral engagement, academic achievement) I have begun to wonder about how self-efficacy fits in. At first I felt that it might be that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between relationships and academic outcomes; however, there is one study showing that there is no direct relationship between peer liking and academic self-efficacy. Further, there are a limited number of studies connecting close teacher relationships to future academic self-efficacy. I am curious about what everyone else thinks. How would you draw the relationship between self-efficacy, close relationships (peers and teachers) and academic outcomes?