Student self efficacy

Student self efficacy key to improving learning

By Louise Wallace-Richards, Assistant Principal Teaching and Learning

Self efficacy: a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation.
Our belief in our own ability to succeed plays a role in how we think, how we act, and how we feel about our place in the world. (A Bandura, 1977, Source)

Self efficacy in humans needs to be nurtured in our homes, classrooms and workplaces and none of us can afford to neglect its development if we want to achieve success in our lives.

During the January staff days, I presented to Secondary School teachers on the topic of teacher self efficacy and collective teacher self efficacy. I was drawn to the topic last year during an online workshop at a time when COVID was bringing new professional challenges for teachers, with the need for teachers to believe that they could continue to help students to learn in the online world. Psychologists such as Albert Bandura and educationalists such as Jenni Donohoo have proclaimed a direct link between a teacher’s belief in their professional abilities and influencing student academic outcomes. They both also comment on the power of collective teacher efficacy to improve student outcomes, with Donohoo stating in 2016:

Collective teacher efficacy is evident when teachers see themselves as part of a team working for their students. When educators believe in their collective ability to lead the improvement of student outcomes, higher levels of achievement result.​ (Donohoo, Collective Efficacy, Source)

At Radford, we have created the climate for the growth in teacher self efficacy through our respectful relationships between colleagues, our culture of coaching to improve teaching practice and the professional learning available for all teachers. We promote collective teacher efficacy through our collaborative teams, shared common pedagogical approaches and communities of practice. In promoting teacher collective self efficacy we are also promoting improvements in student achievement.

A recent example of this was shown during our mid-year professional learning with all teachers in our Secondary School using the new data dashboard, a teaching and learning initiative in our College led by Assistant Principal Lindy Braithwaite, to plan for differentiated learning experiences for our students in semester two. All our teachers appreciate the importance of using data to assist students to improve in their learning. All our teachers are keen to differentiate learning experiences using data and are using the three-tiered approach to plan the experiences.

At the Secondary School Assembly last week, I promoted the development of student self efficacy without actually using the term, given I was speaking to an age range of 12–18 year olds. I didn’t want the audience to tune out straight away! Instead, I started with speaking about learning being challenging. I referenced the image of James Nottingham’s The Learning Pit (above) to bring to their minds times when they may have felt challenged in the classroom and needed to find the way out of the pit.

I then mentioned to them that sometimes I know they feel like there are road (or pit) blocks to their learning and I summarised some of them:

• I don’t understand the learning in this class.
• I don’t understand the assessment task requirements.
• The pace of learning is too fast or too slow for me.
• I prefer the teaching style of the teacher I had in Year …

Given self efficacy also determines what goals we choose to pursue, how we go about accomplishing those goals, and how we reflect upon our own performance, my advice that followed to the students had building their self efficacy clearly in mind:

Talk to your teachers!

By talking with their teachers, students can communicate their concerns and get immediate assistance with their learning. The student and the teacher are then working in partnership on the learning issues and the teacher is empowered to use their expertise to help a student to address roadblocks to their learning and achieving their academic goals.

Through speaking to teachers, students are developing the Radford Learner traits of:

I encouraged all students to make time to talk with their teachers about their concerns at recess, lunch, before school and even in the Homework Hub by organising a time to meet during class time or via a short email. If any student feels they are uncertain about speaking with their teacher about a learning concern they could also speak with the Head of Department (HoD), and I showed the students the images below to remind them of who the HoDs are.

As James Nottingham has sought to depict through his Learning Pit, learning is challenging for all of us. To get out of the pit, we all need to have high self efficacy, a belief that we can accomplish our goals. As parents and caregivers, we need to remember this when we email on our child’s behalf about the assessment task they have been set and are finding challenging or if they are not responding favourably to the teacher’s style. Instead, we need to encourage our children to speak with their teachers or the Heads of Departments first. We need to help them to develop their self efficacy and in doing so, help them to improve their academic results as well as their communication skills, their resilience in the face of challenges and their self regulation.