"Is It Challenging Them Without Killing Them?" How English Language Arts Teachers Develop Students' Self-Efficacy in the Classroom
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Self-efficacy, first conceptualized by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977, refers to an individual’s belief in their own abilities. Subsequent research from Bandura links classroom self-efficacy to cognitive benefits and improved academic performance, though most of this research comes from math and science classrooms. My research sought to answer the question: how do high school English language arts teachers think about their students’ self-efficacy, and how does this inform their pedagogy? I conducted semi-structured interviews with five high school English language arts teachers, allowing them to share their goals for students and their strategies for handling various pedagogical challenges they faced. Teachers expressed various goals for their students, wishing that they could express complex ideas in writing, read for understanding, and come to value the process of learning. Challenges for students fell along similar lines, with reading and writing most pressing. A secondary challenge identified was how to challenge students without destroying their confidence. In their responses, teachers discussed working to challenge students while building up their efficacy as writers, specifically through combining modeling and scaffolding. Their interviews also showed a variety of techniques to help students understand class material. Teachers discussed their limitations when it came to student self-efficacy, including how the school system affected students and whether or not they felt they had the power to really change a student’s efficacy. These interviews suggest that teachers are cognizant of the role they play in developing a student’s psyche, and that they feel confident in their ability to help students rise to the challenges of the subject.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | June 7, 2022; June 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hintzman, Caroline |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | Education, Secondary |
|---|---|
| Subject | Self-efficacy |
| Subject | Teaching |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Hintzman, C. (2022). "Is It Challenging Them Without Killing Them?" How English Language Arts Teachers Develop Students' Self-Efficacy in the Classroom. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dv902yw3650
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- Contact
- cghintzman@gmail.com
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