Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy means how comfortable or confident a person in a specific situation. But it can be difficult to accurately rate our own performance. We tend to compare ourselves--our skills, our intelligence, even our looks--to how others seem to us. But not necessarily how they truly are. It's complicated because we might be comparing ourselves to a distorted image to begin with, which will affect how we see ourselves.

One related example is how depictions of class on television affect what average people think is appropriate: television dramas and comedies rarely depicts middle (much less lower) class people very accurately and TV always wants to make things look "nicer" than they really are. Some believe the result is that average (TV-watching) Americans are made to believe that they are not "keeping up," when in fact they are the definition of average. People are more intimately familiar with the status of television characters than with their actual neighbors. This may not have much to do with self-efficacy in an academic sense, but it suggests that a lot of what we think of about ourselves is defined (or at least influenced) by what we see others doing.

I think it's important to keep these kind of forces in mind when dealing with children; they might tend to be presented with "the best" work as an example of what is acceptable. If the exemplary work is more thorough than most children can achieve, then couldn't that affect most of the kids' notions of how good they are? If they are only familiar with the "gold standard" and their own--average--work, how might that affect their self-efficacy?

This gets especially complicated when we think about modeling. We want teachers to model, but in a way that is approachable, not intimidating, to a child. Maxim discusses assistance in much the same way: too little assistance in the form of truisms like "Don't give up!" are meaningless to a child and may raise anxiety to someone who is struggling. On the other hand, too much assistance quickly becomes a free ride for the child in which she is excused from working at all.

The goal is to have children feel that they can achieve in tasks we assign. The best way to ensure this is through clear modeling, clear expectations, and thoughtful differentiation.

Obviously, children have different levels of self-efficacy in different situations, and we don't want kids to all be the same; some kids are going to be better at some things than others. So, its also important to allow children to explore skills that they already have, things that they enjoy doing because they are good at them. This is how self-efficacy can be transformed into self-confidence.

The prompt for this post actually asks about me. Like most everyone, I have a high degree of self-efficacy in a handful of activities and topics that interest me. And very low in others. For example, I feel very confident in my ability to listen critically to and discuss music. I enjoy this activity, was raised in a household with music constantly playing, am a avid hobbyist musician, and have collected records for most of my life. These experiences (some I chose, some chosen for me) have led me to a place where I feel comfortable and likely to be engaged and successful (even if "success" is simply having an intelligent conversation about music with someone). Maxim says that people "tend to bring a greater amount of effort to tasks they think they will do well." This is clearly true, and I think a lot of it simply has to do with pleasure. Music is profoundly pleasant to me--to listen to, to discuss, to play. So through enjoying something I have increased my confidence that I can perform in many musical situations.

On the other end of the spectrum, my self-efficacy involving computers is somewhat less strong. It has improved over the years because of my high level of exposure to computers (and because computers have gotten a lot easier to use over the years), but I often panic when something goes wrong, unable to clearly think of solutions to the various problems that inevitably come up. This is a good example of self-efficacy that is changing: what was once a debilitating fear of computers and low self-efficacy has grown into a resigned acceptance and low-to-moderate level of self-efficacy in the tasks I have to do.

Both processes (my interactions with music and with computers) have been extremely valuable, and I think they can be useful when thinking about children as well. Let children practice the things they love, but also provide emotionally safe opportunities for learning from mistakes that may come from the low self-efficacy experiences in life.