13.1 Appendix b: deciding for yourself about the research  (Page 9/20)

Among societies outside the United States, however, high self-efficacy seemed to predict motivation, much as it does in the “classic” research with white American populations—though again with some differences. Among Italian high school students, for example, self-efficacy beliefs about career choice are strongly associated with the students’ interest in and choice of career (Lent, et al., 2003). Yet the connection between self-efficacy and motivation was found to have a different character for students from Taiwan (Mau, 2000): for them high self-efficacy was associated not with being highly motivated, but with relying heavily on others to assist with making decisions and with being highly rational or logical in making them. Self-efficacy, under these conditions, was not so much a belief in yourself as a belief in your community.

Among the remaining groups—the gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals and the people with disabilities—research was especially scarce and conclusions were therefore hard to reach. The publications that did exist emphasized a belief in the potential value of self-efficacy for these groups, but they did not report research studies describing whether in fact self-efficacy in fact motivated the individuals, or even existed consistently and meaningfully as a concept or belief.

What does the diversity of these findings suggest (beyond Grandmother’s rule that “sometimes one thing happens, and sometimes another”)? Lindley noted two points, both of which were hinted at by some of the studies that she reviewed. The first point is that self-efficacy may be a belief about personal capacity only for some individuals in some situations. For others, efficacy may really be a belief in the group or community, such as your family, classroom, or workplace. Self-efficacy may really be collective self-efficacy —a belief that your group can accomplish its goals. Believing primarily in the group may be quite motivating, but also be quite a different experience from believing primarily in yourself. In recent years some psychologists and educators have acknowledged this possibility and begun studying the dynamics of collective self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Gordon, Hoy,&Hoy, 2004).

Lindley’s second point is that for some groups, the main barriers to success are not beliefs in personal capacity, but real, external obstacles independent of personal beliefs. Imagine, for example, that a person encounters daily, real social prejudice because he or she is non-white, homosexual, or has a disability. For that person, self-confidence may only go part of the way to insuring success, and removing the real social barriers may be needed to go the rest of the way.

For teachers, three implications of this research seem clear. First, individual self-efficacy beliefs do often motivate students, and teachers should therefore encourage them in these students. Second, some students may see their personal capacity in terms of the capacity of groups to which they belong. Teachers can motivate these students by strengthening the capacity of their groups—perhaps using strategies like the ones described in this chapter and the next. Third, some students rightly perceive genuine injustices in their world which limit their chances of success; teachers should not deny the importance of these injustices, but recognize them and do what they can to reduce them.