Here is a nugget…
“Bandura described perceived self-efficacy as “judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations” (p. 122). Bandura proposes that a dynamic interplay between cognitions, emotions, and behavior regulate what we will do, and how well we will do it. However, it is the person’s perception of their efficacy that is actually more predictive of their behavior and its concomitant outcome than the person’s actual abilities. Persons who judge themselves as efficacious will have more favorable outcomes than those who judge themselves as inefficacious despite equal abilities. Bandura asserts, ‘Self-efficacy is enhanced more by how people perceive success than by actual successful performance’ (1986).”
Do you give up before you try? Do your ideas about how well (or badly) you will do stop you dead in your tracks?
Some students walk around thinking, "I am not good at math." It turns out that what makes us “good at math” is mostly dependent on the amount of time we are willing to “hang in there” when faced with a difficult math problem. It is more about confidence in one’s ability to figure it out than “natural ability.”
An excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s, Outliers, describes this process:
“But Renee persists. She experiments. She goes back over the same issues time and again. She thinks out loud. She keeps going and going. She simply won’t give up…We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have ‘it’ or you don’t. But to Shoenfeld (Berkeley professor), it’s not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try…Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”
In fact, “countries where students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.” The questionnaire rankings and math rankings are exactly the same. Effort and hard work make a difference. Valuing effort and hard work is therefore important.
Low expectations of students prevent them from being successful. Success and achievement reap benefits like pride, self-efficacy, empowerment, agency, competence, and mastery – comfort that if I try, I can figure it out and confidence that if I persist, I will succeed.
An excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s, Outliers, describes this process:
“But Renee persists. She experiments. She goes back over the same issues time and again. She thinks out loud. She keeps going and going. She simply won’t give up…We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have ‘it’ or you don’t. But to Shoenfeld (Berkeley professor), it’s not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try…Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”
In fact, “countries where students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.” The questionnaire rankings and math rankings are exactly the same. Effort and hard work make a difference. Valuing effort and hard work is therefore important.
Low expectations of students prevent them from being successful. Success and achievement reap benefits like pride, self-efficacy, empowerment, agency, competence, and mastery – comfort that if I try, I can figure it out and confidence that if I persist, I will succeed.
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