The theory dealing with the kind of behaviour that keep us motivated to achieve something that is hard to achieve is commonly referred as Self-Efficacy theory (Schunk, 1995). People with high self-efficacy for learning are those that get easily engaged in a learning activity, that work harder to achieve a goal and that confront difficulties in positive ways as part of the process of progressing to a higher level. The question is how can we help students to develop high self-efficacy in a specific context?
One way to develop self-efficacy is positive performance. When we obtain positive results in tasks related to achieving our goal we can increase our self-efficacy as we can see that we can progress towards achieving our goal by investing a realistic effort. Negative performance can affect self-efficacy if we find the difficulties early on our learning journey, but once commitment to the goal has been achieved from positive performance, negative performance does not affect commitment (Bandura, 1986 in Schunk, 1995).
Another way to enhance self-efficacy is models. When students perceive others similar to them achieving a goal, or when learning is presented as something reachable by presenting clearly the steps to achieve an outcome, students self-efficacy raises. The importance of a positive model becomes clear by thinking about the impact negative models can have. Think for example of an experienced academic that presents himself as having an innate talent in their field (innate talent is a myth by the way) and that ignores the difficulties students could have to understand things that he communicate as obvious or trivial based on his expertise. This kind of behaviour (that unfortunately it is still very common) can have a damaging impact on student self-efficacy, and shows the importance of positive models in a learning context. The classical experiment in this area is having a group with a supporting guide, and having a group with a discouraging or neutral guide, and as expected the group with the supporting guide develops increased self efficacy (Schunk, 1995).
Another important element that can influence self-efficacy is goal setting. The presence of clear goals is important as this can increase the willingness of students to engage in the activities necessary to achieve those goals. In addition to this, goals can increase commitment when students involved in the activities to achieve the goal can sense their progress towards it. In relation to this, it has also been shown that the proximity of the goal can affect effort. Proximal goals enhance performance as they allow students to self-assess their progress. What about difficulty? As we mentioned before early easier goals can raise self-efficacy at the beginning, but more challenging goals are required latter to enhance perceptions of progress, and encourage more commitment. Another interesting result is that distant goals can also be beneficial as these give students a better perception of their real progress, and give some of sense of control over their progress. The importance of this sense of control connects also to results showing that self-set goals can also have a significant impact in raising self-efficacy.
Another key element to raise self-effectiveness is effective and timely feedback. Feedback about what is causing your progress, whether is effort or ability, raise self-effectiveness when is credible. For instance, early in the learning journey, ability feedback (e.g. You are good at this! ) is credible when the student is finding they can progress to a learning goal and can help to raise self efficacy. In the middle of the learning journey, when real effort is required, praising such effort is more beneficial (as the praise is credible). Later when some skills have been developed, ability feedback again can help to point the development of such skills and raise self-efficacy, because it is credible again. Another kind of feedback is performance feedback, performance feedback is key to maintain self-efficacy as it helps students to assess their own progress, this kind of feedback is fundamental particularly when is difficult for student to assess such progress (e.g. is it my writing getting better?). And finally, goal progress feedback is also fundamental, a clear path towards the goal and current progress can help as students can measure that they can progress to the goal if they continue putting effort in their journey (Schunk.1995) .
How can we translate all these results about self efficacy in our learning designs? We can summarise these results as follows. An effectively designed learning journey has to have clear goal oriented journey, where students have a clear map of the path to follow to achieve mastery (goal setting). The goal structure journey is a combination of long distant goals (e.g. to learn to master piano playing, to be able to play Lizt) and proximal goals (e.g. learn sight reading, learn to play easy pieces). At the beginning of the learning journey towards every proximal goal, learning should promote positive performance (early success) and ability feedback at this point can be beneficial. As the journey progress, difficulty should increase to maintain goal commitment and praising effort can be beneficial. Along the whole journey, performance feedback for student to assess the state of their progress is fundamental. In the same way, a clear guide of progress toward goals achievement can help students to see how their effort is really paying and can reinforce long term commitment.
From the structure just described, plus the characteristics of a learning journey to develop advanced expertise discussed in a previous post, we now have a powerful toolkit to design learning journeys that can help students to stay motivated in the difficult journey towards the development of advanced expertise.
References:
- Schunk, D. H. (1995). Self-efficacy, motivation, and performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 7(2), 112-137.
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