Self-Efficacy

Raising the Bar for All Students

Robert Bertrando, Marcia Conti- D' Antonio, Joanne Eisenberger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317919186
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The fourth edition of this highly praised book includes coverage of evidence-based education and No Child Left Behind. Like the previous editions, it offers authoritative and balanced overviews to help you make distinctions between innovative programs backed up by sound research support and "faddish" ideas which lack a research base.

1

SELF-EFFICACY VERSUS
SELF-ESTEEM

The regulations of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and regualtions of the recently reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA ’04) continue to drive the nature and practice of education in the United States. States must include students with learning needs in their statewide and district wide testing programs and include their scores in school reports. The vast majority of students with all types of learning needs, including those in need of Special Education, must remain the shared responsibility of the general education and Special Education teachers. IDEA ’04 is premised on basic beliefs:

♦ The majority of students with disabilities are best educated with their nondisabled peers.

♦ Students with disabilities must have access to the general curriculum, including the same skills, concepts, contents and understandings as their nondisabled counterparts.

♦ Students in both NCLB and IDEA ’04 are required to progress. NCLB requires that schools make adequate yearly progress, IDEA ’04 requires that students make meaningful progress.

The intent of both laws is clear. Schools must employ best practices to ensure that all students progress. Schools that have not demonstrated Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) must now improve and children not making meaningful progress must do so. All teachers must expect high standards of performance from all students. General education teachers, who may be content experts, must now expand their educational knowledge, improve their lesson designs, and expand their instructional practices and assessment methods to allow the disabled not only to access the curricula they are delivering but to facilitate progress. Progress, once limited to summative evaluations and measured in factual objective tests, must be expanded to include ongoing progress monitoring, and teachers must remain vigilant to ensure that meaningful progress is made within the general curriculum as well as toward Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals.

NCLB and IDEA ’04 have also redefined the curriculum, expanding the traditional definition to include multiple opportunities for students to show what they know, understand, and can do. General education is now defined as a continuum of outcomes and skills for all students ages 3 to 21. It involves all of the acivities, materials, instructional techniques, and objectives experienced by all students. While specific content knowledge is an integral part of all curricula, the requirements of inclusion have expanded the definition to include skills and processes as well as activities, materials, and instructional techniques. Teachers must now attend equally to content and process and be able to articulate both. Teachers join parents as central members within the education program (IEP) teams, using their knowledge of the curricular demands and requisites of the child, to develop learning goals for all education students. Parents and caregivers provide the cultural/experiential lens through which to view their unique child.

Because of IDEA ’04 and NCLB, students with all types of learning needs may arrive in general education teachers’ classrooms with deficiencies in the strategies that are important for academic, behavioral, linguistic and social functioning. Students with learning needs may not know how to approach tasks with an effective plan of action nor be able to estimate accurately how much time a task will require. They may not have the skill attitudes and dispostions necessary to be successful. Some of these students may exhibit disorganized thinking and have problems in planning, organizing and controlling their lives in academic and social settings. They may lack resilience and self-efficacy. Their school performance, when compared with their ability or their nondisabled peer group may be poor. This poor performance may be evidenced on report cards rife with D’s and F’s, by poor attendance or by discipline issues. The work that they do may be incomplete or of poor quality, which they may explain on personal terms. They may request adult intervention/help before making an attempt to improve their work, or they may avoid tasks completely by treating teachers and other adults as enemies to fight. They often have no strategies for comprehending, retrieving, or using information. They may attend high poverty schools. They may have a tendency to complete only work that is effortless and openly complain if work requires effort. They behave as though they have no autonomy over how they live their lives. These are students who have not developed self efficacy, the belief that they have the capabilities needed to produce quality work through sustained effort (Fig. 1.1). Because these students approach difficult tasks without self efficacy, they question their capabilities and make very poor use of their skills. However, with strategy instruction, students can make better use of their abilities. The student response in Figure 1.1 illustrates the power of strategy instruction.

Many general education students also evidence learning or behavior problems that call for specialized or remedial instruction in order to develop a sense of efficacy. Because these students have not developed a belief in the learning efficacy needed to activate and sustain the effort and thought required for skill development, many of these students are at risk for school failure. These students can be informally categorized according to the causes of learning interference, but they do not require Special Education and are still required to make progress under NCLB. These categories include children whose native language is not English, students who exhibit cultural differences, slow learning rate, and underachievement, as well as students with diagnosed learning weaknesses or health disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity, and students who exhibit cumulative deficits or educational deprivation. Varied experiential backgrounds and/or inappropriate teaching, accompanied by some learning differences and weaknesses, account for the academic difficulties of these students. Without appropriate attention, these students eventually may become classified as disabled and enter burgeoning special education programs.

As members of the IEP team, special education and general education teachers will need to help parents recognize that the goal of IDEA ’04 is to graduate productive, resilient, independent citizens to the greatest extent possible. Educators need to include parents in problem solving and goal setting so that efficacy training and reinforcement can occur at home as well as at school. Parents can provide the cultural/experiential lens through which their children can be viewed more completely by the school team. Teachers need to articulate the benefits of efficacious behaviors, provide concrete and accurate information about their student’s progress, and be prepared to encounter opposition from parents and administrators as students who are accustomed to an easy ride express their complaints. Parents must also be supported as they struggle with the realization that appropriate but rigorous and demanding tasks need to be part of their child’s education. For more information on working with parents see chapter five.

FIGURE 1.1. A STUDENT’S RESPONSE TO THE SAME
QUESTION BEFORE AND AFTER STRATEGY INSTRUCTION

Directions: Explain how your learning styles and intelligence strengths affect your learning.

Before Strategy Training		I think I learn better with groups because then I’m not depended on to do the whole project by myself, If I have a project I can fall back on my friends if I don’t understand or need help, they would have the same topic.
After Strategy Training		I am a visual learner, I believe that by highlighting, keeping assignments & tracking my graids I will remember the things & that by positive self talk, having a studdie partner, and requesting for help on tests I will be come a better learner.

NCLB and IDEA ’04 require teachers to be highly qualified. Special Education teachers ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Page
• About the Author Page
• Foreword Page
• Foreword in Previous Edition
• Preface
• Contents
• 1 Self-Efficacy Versus Self-Esteem
• 2 Instructing for Self-Efficacy
• 3 Learning to Learn—Exercises That Promote Efficacy
• 4 Assessing Student Growth in the General Curriculum
• 5 Helping Parents to Foster Self-Efficacy in their Children
• Appendix I Strategies
• Appendix II Forms