The Motivation And Self Efficacy Of Struggling Learners

Educators must always offer encouragement on a regular basis as it builds a supportive classroom environment. It encourages student to focus on their effort rather than their achievement. Therefore students receive positive feedback for trying hard, but may be unsuccessful with the task. Educators must also look for assets in each student as it encourages the student to display the positive behaviour exemplified by assets such as cooperation, persistence and loyalty (Edwards and

These smaller goals can span any amount of time, short-term or long-term (Massey, 2014). Having smaller sub-goals will help make the main goal appear more achievable, and celebrating the completion of each of these sub-goals will serve as a catalyst to keep the student excited and motivated as they continue along their educational journey (Williams, 2014). By not setting smaller goals and missing larger goals, students will get discouraged and feel like failures (Williams, 2011).

The efforts to reaching a goal begin with self-discipline and confidence that accomplishing the goals with being another milestone completed within the timeframe allotted. Reviewing each goal over and over is something that will happen on a regular basis until satisfaction of the results. Making one’s self-accountable to family and friends is one of the best ways to reach a goal. The family and friends support an individual with his or her vision to do better in life. Determining the big picture of the goals, selecting activities to help achieve goals and choosing daily tasks to make up the chosen goal is heading in a positive direction (Laureate Education,

Another piece of evidence from Making Kids Work on Goals is based on failing multiple times but not giving up and still thinking they can do it. Short-term goals can help with always being able to think you can do it by accomplishing one it can boost your self-esteem. “Instead of giving up she helped David map out a new approach, practicing at home, getting coaching and learning to visualize himself playing well”. This shows that multiple short term goals can lead to more confidence and maybe achieve a dream

Educational Psychology Review. Vol.12 (1). Retrieved from http://www.unco.edu/cebs/psychology/kevinpugh/motivation_project/resources/tollefson00.pdf Zimmerman, B. J. (1989). A social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning.

“I will start running”, for instance, is not a well developed goal. Professor Chang from the National Changhua University conducted an experiment testing the impact of specific and nonspecific goals. Elementary students were split into two groups: in one group, the teacher gave students nonspecific goals like “do your best” and “try hard”, and in the second group, the teacher gave each student a specific number of questions to get correct on a test. When both groups took a vocabulary post-test, students who were given a specific goal scored on average twenty-four points higher than students who were given nonspecific goals (Chang 61). To revise the first statement I wrote earlier, “I will run two miles a day” is a more specific and tangible goal that a rookie runner can take to approaching and persevering in their goal. As a note, people who feel they aren’t as motivated as others shouldn’t fear goal setting. In fact, two researchers conducted an experiment that created randomized groups with both high and low achieving students. The results concluded that “low need achievers who received externally imposed goals performed more poorly on the task than did low need achievers with self-set goals or high need achievers with imposed goals” (Horn and Murphy 275). With the research done by Horn and Murphy, it becomes evident that the goals people persevere through are usually more effective when they are self-imposed. Why?

Educators throughout the nation have become frustrated with the demand of how to encourage and motivate their students especially those that are not prepared academically and socially. In this case a student will generally display disruptive behavior, a lack of interest, and unrealistic ambitions. Once an educator is able to identify the different factors that affect a student’s motivation along with a few helpful strategies he or she will be able to create the educational motivation needed for effective student learning.

The results of the investigation would seem to suggest that motivation and self-efficacy have an impact on academic success and likewise on the process of learning. There also appears to be some impact of age on motivation and self-efficacy.

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are the largest groups of students with exceptionalities in the classroom today (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). LD students have held this ranking since the 1980’s. The numbers for the next leading group of exceptional students in the classroom (speech/language impaired students) are almost half that of LD students (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). Students with learning disabilities may not seem that different from their neurotypical peers. They may have trouble learning in some academic areas, even when provided highly effective instruction, but do fine in others (Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, Lipsey, and Roberts, 2002). The unevenness in their academic development is a main characteristic for LD students (Torgesen, 2002). Other typical characteristics that might be found include low achievement rates, easily distracted, lack of social skills, lack of motivation, and difficulty with information-processing (Rosenberg, 2011, p. 142). Of students

Teaching the students self-efficacy they will be capable of performing a task or managing a situation. Some student with high self-efficacy believes they can reach their goals, but some student’s may set unrealistic goals, and experience failure and frustration.

Windy- You make a good point about self-motivated learners. In order for the vision of a democratic classroom to play out students must be driven to research classroom topics, take a side and prepare for discussions. In classrooms, this seems to be the exception rather than the norm. Teachers can prepare great lessons but students must come to class prepared and motivated to participate in order for lessons to come full circle.

In “Self-Efficacy and Theory” the “Bandura's social learning theory” is discussed. Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief in themselves and their capability of performing a task and is considered as a main element in the “Bandura” theory. The three dimensions of ‘self-efficacy’ that are mentioned include magnitude, strength and generality. Moreover it is important that behavior is measured correctly in the analysis of efficacy and should be adapted to the topic being studied and to tasks whilst increasing the difficulty of the task. The four main keys that influence self-efficacy are enactive mastery, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional (physiological) arousal; these keys provide important data however self-efficacy

The Self-Efficacy theory was created in the 1970s by Albert Bandura. Behavior theories created earlier in time were based on psychological components and had 3 characteristics. The characteristics stated that behavior is psychically regulated by the sub-conscience, a behavior that is different from normal is a symptom of a disease or disorder, and a behavior is able to change with the help of a therapist. With more research, it was later decided that behavior results from a connection between personal, behavioral and environmental factors and that a behavior that is different than normal does not mean it is a symptom of a disease or disorder. Both the earlier and later theories worked, so Albert Bandura found the common thread between the two approaches and came up with the Self-Efficacy theory. This theory was created as a common ground between the early and later theories. It states that people will only do things that they believe they can achieve. If they do not think its achievable, they will not try it. This gives a reason as to why some people do not attempt certain tasks, while others do. Increasing one’s self-efficacy can help them be more productive and attempt more challenging things and when this is applied to health behavior, it can increase their health.

Individuals with low self-esteem often suffer from feelings of inferiority and depression. In these cases, academic success is certainly challenging. I reinforce this notion by paralleling with the social and emotional well-being of students with learning disabilities. Those that have had positive experiences both at school and at home do not necessarily suffer from low self-esteem. Support and guidance are key issues in maintaining good self-concept in these individuals. Focusing on skills other than those measured through academic evaluations allows students with learning disabilities to recognize their value and self-worth as a whole not just through academic performance. Justifiably, most do have a negative self-perception of their academic competencies, but still prove to have good self-esteem.

The contemporary articles that will be presented within this review of the literature need to be interpreted in a similar manner in order to fully understand how they interconnect. As expressed previously by Wigfield and Guthrie (1997), it is common knowledge that reading motivation is multifaceted in nature. Students can be motivated by several influences such as social pressure, ability, self-efficacy, interest, purpose, challenge, ethnicity, and socio-economic status (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; McKenna et al., 1995; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Due to the nature of the topic within this review of the literature, motivation will be considered to be affect by a collective self-efficacy theory. Historically a forerunner in the psychological field of self-efficacy is Albert Bandura. His work focused on self-efficacy affecting the amount of effort exerted on an activity for a duration of time (Bandura, 1977). Specifically, perceived self-efficacy is described as an individual’s on perceptions of their ability to be successful when completing a task (Bandura, 1977). This idea of self-efficacy has been reflected in all of the three exemplar articles as being lower in boy readers than girl readers (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; McKenna et al., 1995; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Bandura (1977) extended his theory of self-efficacy to additionally be affected by social comparison experiences. In respect to social compliance, males have been studied to be influenced on