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Self-efficacy is a vital part of classroom culture but how to incorporate it into the classroom can be a challenge. But building this skill can make learning a great experience for all involved.
Pre-task: The forethought stage is the stage that students should examine the task before them ahead of proceeding with the task at hand (Zimmerman, 2002). This can foster goal setting behaviors by setting expectations and creating a plan. In this level students can show forethought by making a plan of action, brainstorming in a visual organizer or making inferences alongside making achievable goals for themselves (Paris, Paris, 2001).
During Task: The performance Phase is the stage where the processes happen during the behavioral implementation. The major points of interest for this part will be self-control and self-observation. During self-control, the strategies chosen in the forethought phase will be developed more. For Self-observation, recording personal events and experiment to find the cause of events (Zimmerman, 2002).
Post-task: This is the self-reflection phase that gives the opportunity for students to look back on their work and reflect (Zimmerman, 2002). At this stage students should look back at their work and make new goals for the future, analyze what they could have done better and take stock of what they did well on. This will foster more goal setting behavior in the future (Paris, Paris, 2001).
What to avoid in the classroom:
While fostering an environment in which goal setting behavior and self efficacy is prevailing there are aspects you need to avoid and be aware of. If a student has a history of poor performance their confidence might be lowered and they are less likely to be motivated in a task. For these students focus on promoting motivation in them. Another aspect to avoid is making evaluations public students might lose confidence and self efficacy resulting in a derailing of self regulation. Also avoid busy work as it will not promote interest and therefore will not foster motivation. Also ensure that students will not be working only for an extrinsic reward. This will not allow an internal motivation that will continue to be fostered(Paris,Paris,2001)
Applying to Teaching:
It is important for the student to know self-regulatory practices, however it’s just as important for the teacher to incorporate self-regulatory practices into their teaching style and lessons. That includes: procedure, motivation and feelings of efficacy, choices and consequences, knowing good strategies will lead to greater success, improvement like evaluation and goal setting, working in pairs with reciprocal teaching, explicit expectations, topics brought by students, teamwork in editing, give students coping strategies like how, when, where and why, learn from peers, practice everyday, self instruction to promote self regulatory by identifying the problem, focusing, coping with anxiety, goal setting, and self motivation (Paris, Paris, 2001). An example of this for goal setting would be working with your students to identify a particular thing they are struggling with in their learning. Then have them write down specific goals that will help them achieve this academic success. Let's say a student is struggling with keeping on task for a reading assignment at home; the teacher can direct them to a strategy that will help keep them focused, like splitting up the reading and between each section take a 30 second to a minute break to relax their eyes and process what they just read, even write down any questions for class that came up while processing.
Project Based Learning is also a good way to include these practices. It “focuses on student-designed inquiries of authentic problems in realistic environments that use many resources and extend over time.” (Paris, Paris, 2001). Students will create a project where they pick their own meaningful question and figure out how to approach it, while they assign responsibilities to each member of the group. It has to be researchable, filled with understanding and collaboration. This makes it so everyone has a responsibility so that the work is done equally, they learn to problem solve, cooperate as a group and get some outside perspectives to adapt their skills and goals. Also, this style of learning has a process through doing, once students have that and use self-regulatory learning, their work and goals will gradually happen.
Applying it to Teaching from the comics:
This comic demonstrates how Calvin is lacking motivation in the classroom. To foster more creativity Ms. Wormwood can try incorporating Calvin’s interest into the classroom to create more intrinsic motivation in Calvin. Ms. Wormwood can do this by asking Calvin about his interests such as archaeology and incorporate those into her lessons so Calvin feels more motivated to pay attention in class.
In this comic strip, we see that Calvin doesn’t recognize that he will be evaluated on his academic progress. If Calvin used self-regulatory practices, he would know to self-assess his own progress to see his improvement, without comparing himself to others and have an idea of what to expect for his report card. Ms. Wormwood could help Calvin set time aside for self reflection and help him recognize his work in a positive way, as well as help him set up goals to improve.
This is an example of what not to do when you want to have a self-regulated classroom. As discussed on the page on self-efficacy in the classroom any public evaluations should be avoided especially when it’s so negative. Ms. Wormwood should try private evaluations where she writes down areas of improvement or tells her students privately. This will avoid students from being discouraged in class and losing motivation to be a self regulated learner.
This comic strip demonstrates Calvin’s lack of self-motivation, intrinsic interest and learning goal orientation (Zimmerman, 2002). It also shows that Ms. Wormwood's class is not incorporating self-regulatory learning, mainly due to what Calvin says in the last portion of the comic. She could help Calvin understand his self-judgment, which correlates with causal attribution. Control methods are another tool she can use like imagery, self-instruction, attention focusing and task strategies for Calvin to use when studying. Ms. Wormwood could help by introducing deductive reasoning skills to the class and practice with the class. This could help him understand the importance of the test questions and take tests better.
Here we see that Calvin is attempting a strategy to be more positive towards homework but ultimately this strategy failed. Ms. Wormwood should help Calvin learn strategies to use when he gets demotivated like forming a plan and reflecting after the fact and practice it with Calvin. By repeating this practice it should become second nature to Calvin and help him become more successful in his homework.
Calvin, at first, has a strategy for his homework in this comic by taking a section at a time. However, because his forethought phase was not processed correctly he doesn’t have self-motivation and task analysis. Ms. Wormwood can help with this by assisting him include self-instruction in his learning by coming up with questions he might have for the reading, and elaborating on the reading.
Calvin is demonstrating that he has an interest in archeology and dinosaur excavation. To help foster more motivation and creativity Ms. Wormwood should implement project based learning where Calvin will learn through doing. This will allow him to explore his interests by forming a question, making a plan for research and presenting it to his peers. Ms. Wormwood could incorporate project based learning by allowing Calvin to make his own question, Research the question and then present the project to the class. This project based learning will foster his creativity and help build intrinsic motivation in Calvin.
How Ms. Wormwood can foster more positive motivation patterns in Calvin:
Calvin is not a hopeless case; he shows great potential if he could only build up some self regulation with the help of Ms. Wormwood. If Ms. Wormwood allowed for more project based learning in her classroom that allowed for interest to grow in Calvin we might see more participation out of Calvin. It seems that Ms. Wormwood does mostly assessment based tasks that are closed tasks like quizzes and closed ended questions like “when, where, why” that have specific answers(Paris,Paris,2001). Instead if she incorporated a more open task classroom Calvin would be more motivated in the classroom. Ms. Wormwood should also be careful of how she approaches Calvin’s learning and make a positive environment where Calvin’s creativity is nurtured. Ms. Wormwood needs to remember that “the ultimate goal of the education system is to shift the individual burden of pursuing his own education” -Barry Zimmerman(Zimmerman,1990).To foster this Ms. Wormwood should practice Planning, setting goals, organization and self evaluations with Calvin. Along with these strategies Ms. Wormwood should practice with Calvin strategies to re-focus on the task at hand (Boekaerts,Cascallar,2006). All of these strategies implemented for Calvin will help him improve.
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