Self-Efficacy and the Effects of Poverty on School Children Essay Example

adults in school in an effective manner.

These issues not only have an impact on the learning of the child of poverty but can also impact the learning of other children. Even more detrimental is the impact of poverty on a child’s self-efficacy. Bandura (1986, 1994, 1997) suggests that predictions about possible outcomes of behavior are critical for learning because they affect goals, effort, persistence, strategies, and resilience. “Will I succeed or fail? Will I be liked or laughed at? ” “Will I be more accepted by teachers in this new school? ” These predictions are affected by self-efficacy–our beliefs about our personal competence or effectiveness in a given area.

Bandura (1994) defines self-efficacy as “people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives” (p. 71). Most people assume self-efficacy is the same as self-concept or self-esteem, but it isn’t. Self-efficacy is future oriented, “a context-specific assessment of competence to perform a specific task” (Pajares, 1997, p. 15). Self-concept is a more global construct that contains many perceptions about the self, including self-efficacy.

Self-concept is developed as a result of external and internal comparisons, using other people or other aspects of the self as frames of reference. But self-efficacy focuses on your ability to successfully accomplish a particular task with no need for comparisons–the question is whether you can do it, not whether others would be successful. Also, self-efficacy beliefs are strong predictors of behavior, but self-concept has weaker predictive power (Anderman & Anderman, 2009: Bandura, 1997. ) Self-efficacy is “context specific”, which means it varies, depending on the subject or task.

For example, my sense of efficacy

for singing is really low, but I feel confident in my ability to read a map and navigate. Even young students have different efficacy beliefs for different tasks. One study found that by the 1st grade, students already differentiated among their sense of efficacy for reading, for writing, and for spelling (Wilson & Trainin, 2007). Self-efficacy is concerned with judgments of personal competence; self-esteem is concerned with judgments of self-worth. There is no direct relationship between self-esteem and self-efficacy.

It is possible to feel highly efficacious in one area and still not have a high level of self-esteem, or vice versa (Valentine, DuBois, & Cooper, 2004). Virtually all people can identify goals they want to accomplish, things they would like to change, and things they would like to achieve. However, most people also realize that putting these plans into action is not quite so simple. Bandura and others have found that an individual’s self-efficacy plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy:

View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered. Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate. Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities. Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments. People with a weak sense of self-efficacy: Avoid challenging tasks. Believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities. Focus on personal failings and negative outcomes. Quickly lose confidence in personal abilities (Bandura, 1994). One of the social issues facing children of poverty is emotional trauma.

This sort of trauma has a great impact on a child’s self-efficacy. The emotional climate can often be very stressful and emotionally depriving.

The lack of emotional nurturing can lead to feelings of alienation, inadequacy, depression and anxiety. Aggressive or impulsive behavior and social withdrawal can also result. Emotional security and self-esteem are often lacking. There is a craving for attention and a need to belong (Ciaccio, 2000; Brophy, 2000). The characteristics that are lacking in the poverty environment are those that help foster effective learning and academic success.

Emotional draining and negative self-status can literally zap the motivation to learn out of children These beliefs begin to form in early childhood as children deal with a wide variety of experiences, tasks, and situations. However, the growth of self-efficacy does not end during youth, but continues to evolve throughout life as people acquire new skills, experiences, and understanding (Bandura, 1992). Bandura identified four sources of self-efficacy expectations: mastery experiences, physiological and emotional arousal, vicarious experiences, and social persuasion.

Mastery experiences are our own direct experiences-the most powerful source of efficacy information. Performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. However, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy. Past successes and failures in similar situations, as perceived by the individual is an example of a mastery experience. To increase efficacy, the success must be attributed to the ability, effort, choices, and strategies of the individual-not to luck or extensive help from others.

Level of arousal affects self-efficacy, depending on how the arousal is interpreted. As you face the task, are you anxious and worried (lowers efficacy) or excited and “psyched” (raises efficacy) (Bandura, 1997: Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008)? Our own responses and emotional reactions to situations also play an important role in self-efficacy.

Moods, emotional states, physical reactions, and stress levels can all impact how a person feels about their personal abilities in a particular situation.

A person who becomes extremely nervous before speaking in public may develop a weak sense of self-efficacy in these situations. However, Bandura also notes "it is not the sheer intensity of emotional and physical reactions that is important but rather how they are perceived and interpreted" (1994). By learning how to minimize stress and elevate mood when facing difficult or challenging tasks, people can improve their sense of self-efficacy. In vicarious experiences, someone else models accomplishments. Witnessing other people successfully completing a task is another important source of self-efficacy.

According to Bandura, “Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers' beliefs that they too possess the capabilities master comparable activities to succeed” (1994). When the model performs well, the student’s efficacy is enhanced, but when the model performs poorly, efficacy expectations decrease. Bandura also asserted that people could be persuaded to belief that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. Social persuasion can be a “pep talk” or specific performance feedback. Consider a time when someone said something positive and encouraging that helped you achieve a goal.

Getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and instead focus on giving their best effort to the task at hand. Social persuasion can counter occasional setbacks that might have instilled self-doubt and interrupted persistence. The potency of persuasion depends on the credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise of the persuader (Bandura, 1997). When many children from low SES run into difficult challenges they engage in negative self-talk and may perceive their failures as challenges

they cannot overcome.

They may not increase their efforts and may become despondent if they interpret failure to mean they are personally deficient. Because of the culture they live in, they may also feel exploited or disrespected and respond hostilely or apathetically. Goal setting is a critical aspect of agency because it allows individuals to construct outcome expectations. This provides direction, coherence and meaning to life, elements often lacking in low SES students, and can also enable these students to transcend the dictates of their environment.

There is a huge responsibility placed on the teachers to place an emphasis on sparking that desire to learn or (motivation) by not only helping to restore the child’s self-efficacy but also by encouraging students to see the demands and rewards of schooling. Children will work hard, for intrinsic rewards, only if they have a very good reason (Ciaccio, 2000). We need to make them feel that they are lovable, important and acceptable human beings by making them feel secure and good about themselves and by building trusting respectful relationships with them (Bassey, 1996).

The teacher may be the dependable and caring adult, often the only adult of this kind, who is a consistent and reliable figure in their lives of unpredictability and change (Bowman, 1994). Positive and respectful relationships of this nature are essential for at-risk students (Hixson and Tinsmann, 1990; Ciaccio, 2000). Children become aware of social and economic status differences at a very young age. They also grow increasingly aware of both their own social status and that of their peers, developing class-related attitudes during their years in elementary school.

Teachers can help children to develop caring and sensitivity toward

different cultures including social classes. Activities and lessons should be based on how children perceive themselves and the world at the various stages of development. For example, children who are in the age range of 7-12 years are less egocentric. They focus on internal characteristics or traits of people as opposed to external, observable social class differences. They also recognize similarities and differences among groups. At around age 11, children can consider causes and solutions to poverty.

For teachers, these aspects of poverty make planning and preparation absolutely critical. Content needs to be related in varying ways to meet the needs of the diverse students in the classroom. We have to consider the cultural values of these children as we arrange their learning. Constructivism is a key concept in that it respects student differences and allows students to use their own prior knowledge and experiences to make connections and learn. It affords students the opportunity to become active learners by questioning, hypothesizing and drawing conclusions based on their individual learning experiences.

If there is limited foundation for children to draw upon, we need to help them develop a base of knowledge and experiences so they have somewhere to start. By providing emotional support, modeling, and other forms of scaffolding, teachers can help students use their strengths, skills, and knowledge to develop and learn (Marlowe and Page, 1999). Learning experiences and problem solving based on real-life problems can help them deal with some of the issues they may be faced with in their lives. Learning by doing gives students the opportunity to be active and imaginative problem solvers (Bassey, 1996).

Thus, diversity actually presents us with a chance to

enhance the quality of education for all our students and provide them with a variety of opportunities to develop into productive citizens. As our schools and nation become more diverse, the need for understanding and acceptance of differences becomes more important. Our challenge is to provide children with an effective multicultural education that will foster awareness, respect, and acceptance. Taking into account a spiral curriculum, at earlier ages children can become acquainted with social class and other cultural differences.

During the latter years, the topic can be revisited for deeper understanding. This is a great opportunity to include community service learning projects in the curriculum, such as volunteering as a class in a soup kitchen. It is important that these activities be followed with both group discussion and individual reflection to help children think critically about their experiences (Chafel, 1997; Gomez, 2000). Many learning activities do not provide objective standards for assessing performance, and students must evaluate their capabilities in relation to the achievements of others.

Within a classroom, students make judgments about their own abilities by assessing their progress in comparison with their classmates, as well as by observing how well classmates progress. The more a student perceives himself to be like a classmate, the more the classmate’s success or failure will have an impact on his judgment of his own ability. This perceived similarity to the model is an important factor. Models who are similar in competence provide the best yardstick for students to assess their own skills and ability.

Students with low SES may also be depressed, have a fear of failure due to past experiences or have acquired failure expectations from their parents. They

may be truly capable children who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences or self-imposed mind-sets, have come to believe that they cannot learn. If they doubt their academic ability, chances are they envision low grades before they even complete an assignment or take a test. This has an effect on goal setting in that these individuals also tend to set lower goals for themselves.

They may have no real personal goals or vision, but only fantasies of what they hope for. If they do have goals, these children need to learn how they can achieve the goals and develop awareness of the possible self. Goals need to be difficult but attainable in order for significant achievement to be recognized. We need to assign challenging tasks and meaningful activities that can be mastered (Huitt, 1999; Pajares, 1996). Through exercises designed to help these children identify what is important to them, we can begin to help them develop conation.

Personal reflection, through the use of a journal, can be a very effective tool for this purpose. Periodic journal reflection on what they think their lives would be like if money and time were not limiting factors and what they think they would do in the future can also be helpful to students. Inquiry learning can help to foster the development of conation, focusing on skills such as problem solving, fact finding, probing, organizing, reforming, adapting, improvising, revising, constructing and envisioning. If a student can become self-regulated, they can mediate the negative environmental influences they may encounter.

Unless they believe they can produce desired results, students have little incentive to persevere in the face of difficulty. Efficacy beliefs influence whether

people think pessimistically or optimistically and in ways that are self-enhancing or self-hindering. Teaching the use of self-talk techniques through role playing and group activity can be helpful in identifying thoughts that are often inaccurate and negative. This can also help students to persist longer at challenging tasks as opposed to simply giving up, resulting in higher levels of achievement (Huitt, 1999; Pajares, 1996).

The social environment has an impact on goal-oriented motivation. We need to work towards developing cognitive components that enhance self-direction, self-determination and self-regulation. Low SES children need to realize the possibilities in their lives, set goals that they can attain and experience success directly, through mastery experiences, and vicariously, through the success of others. Teachers should focus on the learning process, effort and striving, not solely on the ability of the child or results. Personal standards should be stressed as opposed to normative standards.

Because success helps to raise self-efficacy, we should do whatever possible to help our students succeed and work to strengthen confidence through our words and actions. Student self-beliefs have great influence on whether they fail or succeed in school. We need to provide intellectual challenge and create classroom climates of emotional support and encouragement to help students meet the challenge. We need to nurture the self-beliefs of our students and provide them with successful models that transmit knowledge, skills and inspiration.

Improving self-efficacy can lead to increased use of cognitive strategies and, in turn, higher achievement. A high sense of efficacy also promotes pro-social behaviors such as cooperativeness, helpfulness, sharing, and mutual concern for welfare. Many of the difficulties students encounter are closely connected to beliefs they hold about themselves

and their place in the world they live in. Academic failure is a consequence of the beliefs that students hold about themselves and about their ability to have control over their environments.