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.