Self-Efficacy: One Teacher's Concern for Reading Improvement Students

Ohio Reading Teacher, Fall 2003-Spring 2004 by Halsey, Pamela

Furthermore, teachers should supply appropriate feedback about students' reading progress. The means for the two groups were closest on the Social Feedback Scale, and both groups were classified as low on this scale. Appropriate feedback must include more than praise and rewards; students should be taught how to assess their reading ability. Bandura (1977) suggested that individuals who receive social persuasion that they have capabilities to master difficult situations may need more support. They need to be provided with aids for effective action in order to mobilize greater effort.

Teaching students strategies that proficient readers use will help give them tools for various reading situations, especially those reading situations in which they encounter unfamiliar content or unfriendly texts. Bandura (1977) aptly stated:

To raise by persuasion expectations of personal competence without arranging conditions to facilitate performance will most likely lead to failures that discredit the persuaders and further undermine the recipient's perceived self-efficacy (p. 198).

The principle of facilitating a foundation of student success and building on this foundation is appropriate to enhance true self-efficacy based onreal success and continued effort to improve. Children need to see that their efforts yield positive results and that their progress is continuous. Children also need concrete illustrations of their progress often. Increase in positive feedback is important from teachers, parents, and classmates. Positive feedback, however, must be accompanied by giving students the tools they need to become successful readers.

High self-efficacy is strongly associated with engagement, effort, and perseverance (Bandura, 1982). Students who have higher levels of self-efficacy are more likely to engage in tasks they perceive as within their capabilities, to exert greater effort to overcome challenges, and to persist until they succeed. Teachers may encourage students to become strategic readers by modeling the use of various strategies, using a variety of texts, and gradually releasing responsibility for employing the strategies to the students, as they become more capable readers. This cycle of modeling and scaffolding will encourage students to engage in increasingly more difficult reading tasks with more effort and perseverance. Success in these tasks provides the experiential-based evidence students need to build higher levels of self-efficacy. It also gives teachers an excellent opportunity to celebrate students' successes as they see students grow toward becoming more independent, proficient readers.

In conclusion, Mrs. Blackwell has made every effort to ensure that her students do not perceive reading improvement class to be a punishment. Furthermore, other students at the school are now allowed to take reading improvement as an elective, regardless of their achievement test scores. Currently, the school is working toward implementing an after-school reading program in addition to classes offered during the school day. The surprising results of this study prompted teachers at the school to reconsider the importance of a student's self-efficacy on learning. It also reminded us that all students need assurance that teachers have a vested interest in student success. Nurturing students toward becoming independent learners necessitates that we make deliberate efforts to enhance affective concepts such as self-efficacy as well as achievement.