• Societies pay dearly for the educational neglect of their youth
• School failure foreshadows delinquency
• Substance abuse
• Teenage pregnancy
• Intellectually deficient youth become disadvantages adults
• Children can learn a lot from computers, but they need human teachers to help build their sense of efficacy, to cultivate aspirations, to find meaning and direction in their pursuits.
• Self-development effects endure into adulthood
• Must develop ability to regulate motivation
• "The major goal of formal education should be to equip students with the intellectual tools, efficacy beliefs, and intrinsic interests needed to educate themselves in a variety of pursuits throughout their lifetime" (214).
• There are three ways in which efficacy beliefs operate as important contributors to the development of cognitive competencies that govern academic achievement
• Students belief in their efficacy to master different academic subjects
• Teacher beliefs in their personal efficacy to motivate and promote learning in their students
• Faculties collective sense of efficacy that their schools can accomplish significant academic progress

STUDENTS' COGNITIVE SELF-EFFICACY (214)

• Perceived efficacy beliefs contribute independently to intellectual performance
• Children with stronger beliefs
• More quickly dissolved faulty strategies
• Solved more problems
• Reworked more problems they failed
• Efficacy beliefs predicted
• interest in mathematics
• positive attitudes toward mathematics
• mathematics ability did not (215)
• Regardless of cognitive ability, efficacious children
• more successfully solved problems
• managed work time better
• were more persistent
• and less likely to reject correct solutions prematurely
• Dale Schunk has investigated the many factors that affect children's perceived cognitive efficacy
• Children have severe math and language skills deficits
• They pursue self-directed easily mastered subskills, supported by
• modeling of cognitive operations
• instruction in higher order strategies
• using differing forms of performance feedback
• positive incentives and aspirational goals
• "Efficacy beliefs are influenced by acquisition of cognitive skills, but they are not merely a reflection of them. Children with the same level of cognitive skill development differ in their intellectual performance depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy" (216).
• Children differ in how they interpret, store, and recall their successes and failures
• same attainments can yield different amounts of efficacy
• Children evaluate social influences that contribute to efficacy beliefs independent of skills (216)
• "Perceived self-efficacy is a better predictor of performance that skills alone" (216)
• Efficacy beliefs play an influential mediational role in academic attainment
• Level of cognitive ability
• Prior educational experience
• Gender
• Attitudes toward academic activities
• All affect performance by how (and how much) they affect efficacy beliefs

Development of Cognitive Self-Efficacy through Aspiration (216)

• The motivating power of personal goals is partly determined by how far into the future they are projected.
• Short term goals provide immediate incentives
• Self-motivation is best sustained by combining long range goals with a series of attainable subgoals to guide and sustain one's effort along the route.
• Proximal goals also serve as effective vehicle for developing a sense of efficacy
• Subgoal attainments provide rising indicants of mastery that help instil growing sense of efficacy
• Reduces the risk of self demoralization
• b/c the same accomplishment that indicates significant progress when evaluating against short term goals may appear trifling and disappointing against lofty, long term aspirations
• The less individuals believe in themselves, the more they need explicit, proximal, and frequent feedback gained by short term goal achievement

Cultivating Intrinsic Interest through Development of Self-Efficacy (218)

• Although behavior is not its own reward, it can provide its own rewards once it gets invested with personal significance
• Once involvement in activities gets tied to personal standards, variations in performance attainments self reactions
• Hitting a white ball into a hole 72 is not in itself satisfying, but personal triumphs over lofty goals that provides the exhilaration
• remove the personal challenges and hitting balls becomes boring
• Personal standards can contribute to enhancement of interest in at least three ways.
• Enlist sustained involvement needed to build competence
• select challenges that match capabilities
• feedback from progress
• personally challenging goals
• the satisfaction derived from goal attainment builds intrinsic interest
• short term goals are better
• Do extrinsic incentives decrease interest? It is a complex question. (221)
• Rewards can increase interest, reduce interest, or have no effect
• Incentives for mastering activities contribute to the growth of interest and perceived efficacy when they
• enhance or authenticate personal efficacy
• people increase interest when they are rewarded for performance

Self-Efficacy in the Use of Cognitive and Metacognitive Skills (223)

• Effective intellectual functioning requires metacognitive skills for how to organize, monitor, evaluate, and regulate ones own thinking processes
• An integral part of teaching is teaching students to regulate their learning
• Knowing what to do is only part of the story
• Failure is often the result of misuse of cognitive skills, not lack of knowledge
• People need a sense of efficacy to apply what they know
• Success is often as much a matter of perceived efficacy as of capability
• Self-regulative function of speech
• Luria has a 3-stage developmental press
• Verbal instruction from others
• Overt self-instruction
• Covert self-instruction
• Vygotsky's model of inner speech guides thought and action
• Meichenbaum's approach is aimed at developing beneficial self-guiding speech
• cognitive skills are described then modeled out loud
• individuals then practice verbalizing the modeled plans for their own problem solving
• coping self-instructions counteract self-debilitating thought patterns when problems arise.
• new skills become routinized
• Verbal self-guidance can enhance competence through
• Heightens attentional rehearsal involvement in cognitive skills, which facilitates learning and retention
• Guided self instruction produce results, but anticipated benefits also produce incentive motivation to apply cognitive aids (224)
• Provides repeated self-affirmations of personal agency that one has gained mastery over one's thinking and performance

Impact of Performance on Perceived Self-Efficacy (225)

• Teachers' evaluative reactions influence students' judgments of their capabilities. These evaluative reactions include
• the attention they pay to students
• teacher expectations
• the standards they set for students
• grouping practices
• difficulty level of assignments
• Greater efficacy in children is developed by ability feedback than effort feedback
• Whether effort attributions carry positive or negative connotations depends on their conceptions of ability
• For people who believe ability is developed by effort, attributing accomplishments to effort enhance efficacy
• Those who see ability as inherent, are likely to question their efficacy by being told their accomplishments are doe to hard work
• Class efficacy
• Ability feedback increases efficacy and performance
• Effort attributions do little for class efficacy
• Conceptions of Ability
• Inherent aptitude undermine development of capabilities
• Acquirable skillfosters resilient efficacy
• Social cognitive view of promoting student achievement
• Ability is construed as a changeable attribute
• Guided mastery is the principle vehicle to develop competencies
• cognitive modeling
• instructional aids
• Growing proficiencies are credited to expanding personal capabilities (226).
• Self-directed mastery experiences are arranged too strengthen and generalize personal efficacy
• Self-regulatory capabilities and higher efficacy are the ultimate goal
• A focus of social cognitive theory is the development of personal agency

Self-Efficacy in Self-Regulated Cognitive Development (227)

• As students progress in their education, they are expected to become more self-directed in their learning - "this requires bringing self-influence to bear on every aspect of learning experiences" (228).
• there is a difference between possessing knowledge and being capable of proficient action
• students often know what to do, but cannot translate that knowledge into proficient performance
• Social cognitive theory expands the concept of self-regulation in two ways.
• Incorporates a large set of self-regulatory mechanisms governing cognitive functioning
• Encompasses social and motivational skills as well as cognitive ones
• Three main features [mechanisms] of motivation
• Selection
• Activation
• Sustained direction of behavior toward certain goals
• Motivational facet of self directed learning includes
• Self-monitoring
• Self-efficacy appraisal
• Personal goal setting
• Outcome expectations
• Affective self-reactions
• Barry Zimmerman's expanded view of academic self-regulation
• people must develop skills to regulate
• motivational
• affective
• social determinants of intellectual functioning
• Students must learn to
• select and structure the environmental settings
• study strategies
• mobilize ans sustain motivation for academic pursuits (over outside distractions such as play and television).
• "When self regulatory skills are lacking, people defer tasks to the last moment and do them minimally or not at all" (229).
• "In self-directed pursuits, people must exercise personal discipline if they are to accomplish what they seek" (229).
• The strategic skills needed to exercise control over one's learning include
• Information processing skills needed for identifying important information, transforming it to improve its meaning, and organizing it into generalizable forms
• Cognitive operational skills for structuring problems in ways that specify goals and possible routes to them, selecting appropriate strategies, and applying them effectively to solve problems
• Metacognitive skills - thinking about the adequacy of one's own thinking
• monitor regulative thought
• evaluate its adequacy in solving problems
• make corrective adjustments
• It is a common finding that people who learn rules in abstract do a poor job of applying them to particular situations
• Metacognitve training must include applying cognitive strategies
• Transference of cognitive skills takes experiences
• Instructing people in the self-regulative process does little
• Self-regulatory development is often social in nature
• Parents ought to do two things
• Set high goals
• Develop the efficacy beliefs needed to achieve those goals
• Writing presents special challenges to self-regulation
• The higher their self-beliefs, the
• less apprehensive students are about writing,
• more useful they regard writing, and
• the better they write (see Pajares & Valiante, 1997).
• Writing beliefs
• Self-efficacy is weakest for taking first steps into writing a piece
• Efficacy to regulate writing activities affects writing attainments by
• strengthening efficacy beliefs for academic activities,
• raising goals for mastering writing, and
• heightening writing aspirations

Peer Influences in the Social Construction and Validation of Self-Efficacy (234)

• Peers contribute to the social construction of intellectual self-efficacy
• Comparative information from teachers and grading
• Students publicly label, rank, and discuss how smart classmates are.
• Ability groupings stabilize (for good or ill) peer evaluations
• Peer models for academic efficacy (success and failure) (234)
• Influence interpersonal affiliations
• who one associates with
• selective orientations with certain peers who set examples
• "efficacy beliefs are both products and determiners of peer affiliations" (235).

Perceived Self-Efficacy and Academic Anxiety (235)

• There is a lot to be anxious about in scholastic life
• Students who are inefficacious
• don't concentrate on mastery, but on the difficulty of the task
• focus on personal inadequacies
• ruminate about past failures
• worry about the consequences of failing
• think themselves into emotional distress and faulty performances
• The impact of past performances in math is mediated entirely through their impact on effect on beliefs of personal efficacy
• The full impact of perceived self-efficacy on academic anxiety is best revealed by assessing belief in one's efficacy to
• Fulfill academic demands
• Exercise control over intrusive thinking
• Ameliorate experienced distress
• Regulate one's study activities

Impact of Cognitive Self-Efficacy on Developmental Trajectories (237)

• Children's intellectual development cannot be isolated from the social relations within which it is imbedded or from its interpersonal effects.
• A secure sense of intellectual and self-regulatory efficacy not only promotes academic success, but also is influential in fostering satisfying and supportive social relationships and positive emotional development.
• Students who doubt their intellectual efficacy gravitate toward students who devalue academic pursuits

Self-Efficacy in Advanced Cognitive Functioning (239)

• Efficacy beliefs are even more critical at advanced levels of cognitive functioning where pursuits demand high levels of self-directedness
• In college, students must choose which educational level to pursue and assume responsibility for their learning
• Self-efficacy plays a large role in career choice
• Predicts academic grades
• By influencing preparatory development and occupational choices, efficacy beliefs partly shape the courses that lives take.
• Perceived self-efficacy figures prominently in scholarly productivity
• Mediational role of self-efficacy is stronger for males than females
• Affects graduate students in several ways
• mastery experiences
• modeling of research strategies
• supportive feedback
• "research, by its very nature, requires resilience and a firm sense of purpose" (240)

TEACHERS' PERCEIVED EFFICACY (240)

• Teacher beliefs in instructional efficacy influence students academic development.
• Teachers with a high sense of efficacy operate on the beliefs that students are teachable through extra effort and appropriate techniques.
• They devote more class time to instructional activities
• Provide guidance more to students who need it.
• Praise their academic accomplishments more.
• Low efficacy teachers feel there is little they can do if students are unmotivated or there is environmental opposition.
• Spend more time on non-academic pastime
• Readily give up on students if they do not get quick results
• Criticize students for their failure.
• Teachers' beliefs in their efficacy affect their general orientation toward educational processes as well as instructional activities (241).
• Low efficacy
• Pessimistic view of students motivation
• Classroom control through strict regulations
• Use negative sanctions to get students to study are mired in classroom problems
• Distrust their ability to manage a classroom
• Are stressed and angered by student misbehavior
• Pessimistic about students improbability
• Take a custodial view of their job
• If they had to do it all over again, would not choose teaching profession
• High efficacy
• Regard their students as reachable and teachable.
• Beliefs about efficacy predicted student achievement.
• The early years of schooling are critical for students
• Beliefs about efficacy are socially constructed by
• Appraisals of performance
• Repeated social comparisons with attainments of peers
• Construal of academic expectations and ability evaluations
• Teachers efficacy is especially influential on young children because
• their beliefs about their own capabilities are relatively unstable
• peer structures are relatively informal
• young children make little use of social comparative information
• Thus, "teachers beliefs in their instructional efficacy is a stronger predictor if the academic attainments of younger students than of older students" (242)
• Teacher burnout is a common problem in education
• Prolonged occupational stressors
• Physical and emotional exhaustion
• Depersonalization of the people one is serving
• Lack of a sense of personal accomplishment
• High efficacy teachers direct efforts at resolving problems
• Low efficacy teachers avoid dealing with problems and turn energies inward to relieve their emotional stress
• Assessing teacher efficacy
• Teacher efficacy in science education is of particular concern
• Assessment of teacher efficacy should be broadened to gauge its multifaceted nature
• Multi item measures are an improvement over single item ones, but teacher efficacy scales are still cast in cast in a general form.
• Teacher efficacy scales should be linked to the various knowledge domains

COLLECTIVE SCHOOL EFFICACY (243)

Teachers operate collectively within an interactive social system rather than as isolates. Therefore, educational development through efficacy enhancement must address the social and organizational structure of educational systems.

• 1940s top disciplinary problems identified by teachers
• Students making noise
• Talking
• Running in the halls
• Chewing gum
• 1980s top disciplinary problems identified by teachers
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Assault and vandalism
• Extortion
• Pregnancy
• Gang warfare
• Rape
• Some educational problems
• Heavy workloads requiring constant intensive interactions
• Little say in how the educational enterprise is run
• Responsibility to meet high public demands
• Disconcerting bureaucratic practices
• Variability of quality of administrative leadership
• Insufficient resources
• Lack of advancement opportunities
• Sizable sharer of problematic students
• Insufficient pay
• Low occupational status
• Inadequate public recognition of accomplishments
• What should be taught
• "In short, educational systems are strewn with conditions that can easily erode a teacher's of efficacy and occupational satisfaction" (244).
• Measuring school efficacy
• Identifying effective schools is not easy
• Control for background
• Ethnic and socioeconomic composition
• Otherwise differences may reflect what students bring to the school
• Traits that contribute to effective schools
• Strong academic leadership by the principal
• High academic standards
• Mastery oriented instruction
• Classroom management skills
• Parental support and involvement

Attributes of Efficacious Schools (244)

• Principals
• Highly efficacious schools - educational leaders who seek ways to improve instruction
• Low efficacious schools - administrators and disciplinarians
• Tracking
• Determines level of intellectual challenge and career guidance
• In efficacious schools, only used to accelerate students so they can become part of regular instruction
• Once tracked, most students remain there
• Rewarded for substandard performances or merely for effort
• Affects high ability disadvantaged minorities
• Often fosters affiliation with low achieving peers
• Affects teachers efficacy which, in turn, affects student efficacy
• Family - "parents are the first teachers, and the home is the first school"
• Efficacious schools heavily involve parents as partners. Parents:
• Prepare children for school
• Place a value on education
• Set beliefs about scholastic abilities
• Set standards of excellence
• Establish regular homework habits
• Help with schoolwork at home
• Encourage language development
• Keep track of academic progress
• Reward efforts
• Support school related functions
• Assist with school activities
• Parental involvement increased the likelihood of high academic tracks
• Supplement education with after school programs
• informal social networks spawn a lot of learning outside school
• Teacher
• Determines level of parental participation (by being more inviting)
• Stronger teachers instructional efficacy, the more parents seek contact with them
• Family involvement is critical
• An effective efficacy building program would include videotaped modeling of family tutoring skills as well as guided practice
• Schools
• Learning activities promote a sense of personal capability and scholastic accomplishment
• Mastery model of learning
• Extensive interactive instruction so students don't fall too far behind
• Students are not sorted into homogenous tracks of fast and slow learners
• Classroom behavior is managed successfully
• Done by praise and encouragement, not by punishment
• Quality of the school environment contributes to academic achievement of schools

Collective Instructional Efficacy (247)

• Teachers with strong instructional efficacy create positive climates for learning
• Devote most time to academic endeavors
• Convey positive expectations
• Instill and reward academic success
• Principal has an large effect on collective efficacy of school
• How teachers view intelligence affects climate
• Acquirable, improvable trait
• Innate unchanging quality
• Strong principals excel at motivating their staff
• Teachers are products and producers of micro environments
• "The differences between schools are greater than among teachers within schools, but collective efficacy is by no means a unitary characteristic" (249).
• Teachers collective efficacy varies across grade levels and subjects
• Low efficacy to promote learning at the entry level
• Middle grades teachers express stronger belief
• In succeeding grades, teachers view their schools as declining in instructional efficacy
• Teachers judge themselves more efficacious to teach language skills that mathematical skills
• Disadvantaged schools
• When no special effort is made, SES and racial composition account for much of the variance between schools in collective efficacy and achievement
• There are not many schools of low SES with lofty collective efficacy and superior achievements
• Causal influences are bidirectional
• Reciprocal causation
• Teachers determine partly what their students learn
• A number of factors in the school environment contribute to teachers beliefs

Models for Enhanced Education of Disadvantaged Youth (251)

• Our schools are not serving disadvantaged youths well.
• Compensatory programs have met with limited success
• Gains are small compared with the huge and widening gaps in achievement that persist between advantaged and disadvantages children
• Educationally disadvantaged represent about a third of the nations student population
• African American students and Latino students drop out at a higher rate than white students
• Educationally disadvantaged students require accelerated not remedial programs
• Competitive solution to education
• Performance accountability
• Educational choice
• Can become socially segregating if it doesn't provide equitable access for all
• Weak schools would become worse and efficacious schools would retain their superiority, thus widening the educational gap
• Creating new schools and operating them successfully present formidable challenges
• No evidence that charter schools turn out superior students
• A society that writes off its disadvantaged members pays a heavy price in social strife and the quality of its economic future
• Society members must commit to an ethic of inclusion
• School failure represents a broader social problem
• Many low SES children are ill-prepared for school
• Cognitively
• Motivationally
• Socially
• Aversive experiences in school breed antagonistic reactions
• Estrangement between parents and schools is especially harmful
• Comers model has three major structural components
• Governance and management team
• teachers, parents, guidance counselors and staff members
• Develops school plan
• In charge of development, governance, and management
• Parent-participation program
• links parents to the development of their children
• teachers aids, librarians, cafeteris, resource center
• parents gain a sense of responsibility in the school life
• Student services team
• Counselors, nurses and other support staff
• Develop and implement individualized programs
• Frees teachers from acting as disciplinarians & lets them teach
• Levin model - accelerated school
• Principles
• Unity of purpose
• Collective enablement
• Shared responsibility
• Building in strengths
• Uses collaborative decision making
• Uses a number of instructional strategies
• Peer tutoring by older students
• Cooperative learning
• Special strengths of students, parents, or staff are emphasized
• There is heavy parental involvement
• Retirees are used to assist teachers
• Differences between Comer's and Levin's models
• Comer relies on heavy interpersonal climate

Implementation Models for School Enhancement (256)

• Must have teachers' and principals' support
• Everyone eventually benefits
• Teachers gain a positive school climate
• Principals find it easier and more rewarding to manage schools
• "Education does not suffer from a shortage of good ideas, but from a shortage of effective means of implementing them" (Levin, 1996).