Self Efficacy Paper

If you were certain you would fail, would you be motivated to change careers, start a business, or run a marathon? For most of us, the answer to these questions would be an emphatic NO! Unfortunately, for students with low self efficacy, this is how they feel when confronted with daily literacy tasks. Research has shown that students with high self-efficacy have increased motivation and improved learning outcomes (Wigfield, 1998; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990). They are more likely to persist when tasks become challenging. On the contrary, a student with low self-efficacy has little incentive to act, or persevere unless they believe they can succeed on a given task (Bandura, 2006). In light of this research and my experiences in the

Self-efficacy is often defined as a persons belief that they can successfully complete a certain task (Bandura, 1994). This sense of ones ability to succeed is an important factor in how a person approaches goals, tasks, and challenges (Luszczynska & Schwarzer, 2005). Thus, self-efficacy is a critically important construct as it relates to a child’s motivation to read and write. When a student with high self-efficacy is presented with a challenging task, they view it as something to overcome, and will put forth the necessary effort to complete the task. For example, when a student with high self-efficacy toward reading begins to encounter problems with a challenging text, they are more likely to believe they need to be more effortful and strategic in order to succeed. To the contrary, students with low self-efficacy focus on their perceived shortcomings and will often try to avoid challenging activities (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas & Doyle, 2013). As you can see, the importance of a child’s beliefs in their ability to achieve a given task can have important implications for their literacy

The Motivation to Read Profile Revised is one formal tool that can help give us some insight. The survey is based on expectancy value theory, which believes that motivation is based on a persons belief in whether they will be able to successfully execute a given task (Malloy, Marinak, Gambrell, & Mazzoni, 2013). This survey is instructive, because it allows us to look at a students perceived self-efficacy in certain areas of reading through questions like “When I have trouble figuring out a word I don’t know, I …..”, “When I am reading by myself I understand…”, “When I read aloud, I am…..”(Malloy, 2013). When students score low on questions like these, it can be an indication that a student may lack the beliefs in these areas to succeed, and teachers can then put a plan in place to build up a students