0.2 Self-efficacy  (Page 4/6)

As a practical matter, creating a genuine history of success is most convincing if teachers also work to broaden a student’s vision of “thepast.” Younger students (elementary-age) in particular have relatively short or limited ideas of what counts as “past experience;” theymay go back only a few occasions when forming impressions of whether they can succeed again in the future (Eccles, et al., 1998). Older students (secondaryschool) gradually develop longer views of their personal “pasts,” both because of improvements in memory and because of accumulating a personalhistory that is truly longer. The challenge for working with any age, however,is to ensure that students base self-efficacy beliefs on all relevant experiences from their pasts, not just on selected or recent experiences.

Watching others’ experiences of mastery

A second source of efficacy beliefs comes from vicarious experience of mastery, or observing others’ successes (Schunk&Zimmerman, 1997). Simply seeing someone else succeed at a task, in other words, can contribute tobelieving that you, too, can succeed. The effect is stronger when the observer lacks experience with the task and therefore may be unsure of his or her ownability. It is also stronger when the model is someone respected by the observer, such as a student’s teacher, or a peer with generallycomparable ability. Even under these conditions, though, vicarious experience is not as influential as direct experience. The reasons are not hard toimagine.

Suppose, for example, you witness both your teacher and a respected friend succeed at singing a favorite tune, but you are unsure whether you personallycan sing. In that case you may feel encouraged about your own potential, but are likely still to feel somewhat uncertain of your own efficacy. If on theother hand you do not witness others’ singing, but you have a history of singing well yourself, it is a different story. In that case you are likely to believe in yourefficacy, regardless of how others perform.

All of which suggests that to a modest extent, teachers may be able to enhance students’ self-efficacy by modeling success at a task or by pointing outclassmates who are successful. These strategies can work because they not only show how to do a task, but also communicate a more fundamental message, thefact that the task can in fact be done. If students are learning a difficult arithmetic procedure, for example, you can help by demonstrating the procedure, or by pointing outclassmates who are doing it. Note, though, that vicarious mastery is helpful only if backed up with real successes performed by the students themselves. Itis also helpful only if the “model classmates” are perceived as truly comparable in ability. Overuse of vicarious models, especially in theabsence of real success by learners, can cause learners to disqualify a model’s success; students may simply decide that the model is “outof their league” in skills and is therefore irrelevant to judging their own potential.

Social messages and persuasion

A third source of efficacy beliefs are encouragements, both implied and stated, that persuade a person of his or her capacity to do a task. Persuasion does notcreate high efficacy by itself, but it often increases or supports it when coupled with either direct or vicarious experience, especially when thepersuasion comes from more than one person (Goddard, Hoy,&Hoy, 2004).