4.7.1 Watch the videos

Explore the information given in the two YouTube videos before reflecting upon this knowledge.

Watch this video: https://youtu.be/agwsjYg9hJ8

Transcription

0:08
I grew up in a family of educators, I spent so much of my childhood in my mother’s kindergarten classroom. And I wanted to be a teacher just like her. I’ve been an educator for over 20 years. And after several years in the classroom, I set my sights on wanting to be a coach. I envisioned myself leading professional development trainings, and supporting teachers in the classroom. And I believed that I could be really good at that. So I applied for a promotion. Unfortunately, my supervisor at the time, did not share that same vision. And I watched my application get thrown into the trash can. And I was told that I would never be a coach. I just didn’t have what it took. And I walked out of that office that day, devastated. Yet a green, insane. You’re right. I don’t know how to be a coach. What was I thinking? It’s surprising how easily our confidence can be broken, isn’t it? how truly fragile it is. But you know what, after some time, those words held less and less power over me, as I started to remember, instead, my mother telling me for years, that I had a unique ability to connect with learners. And I remembered all my parents who went out of their way to tell me what a difference I was making in the lives of their children. And I decided that maybe I don’t know how to be a coach yet. But I do know how to teach and I can transfer those skills. And that’s when I realised I had the resiliency to pick myself up and persevere toward my goal, because I genuinely believed I could do it. I knew I could be a successful coach. So with that, I applied for a different job. And the rest is history. I have been an educator coach for five and a half years. And I am so privileged to even coach other coaches of teachers around the nation, and even some internationally. So how about you? What’s I bet you could all think of that moment in your lives when your belief in your ability to do something outweighed what anyone else told you you could or could not do. That’s because our genuine belief in our abilities, plays a key role in how we approach certain goals, tasks, and challenges. This essential belief in our ability to succeed in specific endeavours is called self efficacy for people with low levels of self efficacy for certain tasks, tend to avoid doing it all together. No, no, no. Or if they do try, they usually give up fairly quickly, because they do not believe that they will ultimately be successful. Whereas higher levels of self efficacy influences our motivation to give it a try and take that action and even to persevere when challenges are encountered. That is the power of self efficacy. It is the fuel that drives change. And that’s why it matters to all of us, no matter our age, or profession. So how do we get more of this? How do we build self efficacy? That is, how do we empower ourselves and others to believe in our ability to do a certain thing, so we can lean in, begin taking that action and make change happen in our lives. Albert Bandura the psychologist who developed the theory identified four sources of efficacy beliefs.

5:03
The first and foremost source is experiencing success. We all know that success builds upon success. And nothing creates more self efficacy than having a direct experience of mastery with that task. Swim instructors know this to be true. When my daughter’s first learned how to swim, their instructors supported them in feeling successful as they mastered each small step towards swimming independently. I do the same with my teachers, when I’m trying to help them learn a new instructional strategy or teaching behaviour. I break it down into small, achievable steps. And I even individualise the beginning point, I match the strategy with the teachers current skills, and we start there. So that the teachers can feel that immediate sense of success with this new strategy, and also have that feeling of I’m already doing this a little. And we build the skill from there. In this way, teachers have a positive experience in implementing the new strategy. And also with the change process itself. The second source of ever efficacy is seeing others like ourselves succeed. When I first ran a five K, I didn’t know if I would ever make it to the finish line. But I was inspired to keep going by those around me, many of whom were also still clearly struggling wasn’t the only one. But they kept putting one foot in front of the other and I decided if they could do it, I could do it too. This source is most pronounced when I support group coaching. When teachers are able to see other teachers like themselves, trying something new in their classroom, and they’re able to hear about the positive response they’re getting from their students, they are much more likely and willing to try something similar themselves in their own classrooms. Having a support group and a community like this helps teachers believe that their success is also possible. The third source of encouragement is receiving specific encouragement. Now, how many of us have our efforts affirmed on a daily basis? up there, no one. Right? We don’t even do that for ourselves.

7:56
By the way, our society treats encouragement and affirmation, as if it’s a very expensive commodity. And you just can’t afford to do it too often. But that’s absolutely false. It’s free. And it is such a powerful motivator that it doesn’t even make sense not to tap into it regularly. I believe in this so much that I encourage my coaches, that whenever they go into a teacher’s classroom, to leave a little sticky note saying something they saw or heard the teacher do that had a positive impact on the students. I wasn’t sure exactly what effect this had on the teachers, until several of my coaches told me how their teachers excitedly showed them, where in the classroom, they kept all of those inspiring notes. You see when we’re trying something new, and making change in the middle of that change process, knowing that our decisions, our efforts, our choices, are being seen and heard and appreciated, helps us to focus more on the progress that we are making toward that goal, then on the challenges that we are currently facing, because there’s always challenges. The fourth source of efficacy is managing negative emotions. When my oldest daughter was eight years old, she was getting ready to take her first high stakes standardised test. As you can imagine, her anxiety was through the roof and she was sure that those feelings meant she was destined to fail. I helped her realise realise that it’s totally natural and normal to feel the way she was feeling. But that when we let our emotions get this big, our brains get small. And it becomes really difficult to think. And she needed to find a way to manage her emotions. So she could keep her brain big, because she was gonna need it. We practised many strategies, and I’m pleased to say that she did really well on that test. But much more importantly, she learned a really valuable lesson, that she has the power to manage her emotions and calm them. We all do. When I work with teachers to create an action plan for them to go into their classroom and independently practice these new strategies we’re working on and teaching behaviours. We always talk about what could go wrong. And then help them to develop some ways to overcome those barriers. So that they can keep practising on their own. We also talk about those stressful feelings that they’re likely to feel when they’re doing new things in front of their students in their classrooms. In this way, I help set my teachers up for success. So they can keep practising, because we’re trying to build habits. And I need them to be able to do that on their own when I’m not there.

11:30
So how do all four of these steps work together to develop self efficacy. years ago, when I was vacationing in Thailand, I somehow let my Floridian ocean loving husband, talk me into going on a beginner scuba diving adventure. Now you need to know I’m from New Mexico, I was born and raised in the desert. And so the idea of going on this and drowning, or being attacked by a sea creature, was very real, and it scared me to death. But I overcame my fears that day, because several very important things happened. First, my amazingly patient instructor was totally then like, broke down the terrifying process of all the mandatory safety procedures I had to go through into small little chunks. So I could focus on that chunk, and feel comfortable and successful. And then we went to the next one. Also, I was able to see others, other newbies like myself succeeding and not dying. And I know many of them were just as nervous as I was because we talked about it on the boat right over. And here they were being brave, and literally taking the plunge. And they inspired me to want to be brave to my husband constantly encouraged me and told me that I could do this. And somehow he kept me from panicking, no small task, because that panic attack was this close.

13:34
Okay. And all of these things work together that day, to help me to do that. The unimaginable to breathe underwater, and survive. So I asked you, what is that thing that you’ve been wanting to try? and you haven’t yet? What is that change that you’ve been waiting to make in your life? What is it going to take for you to believe in your ability to successfully do that. So you can lead in, make that change start to happen and make a positive change in your life. visionary innovator Henry Ford summed it up perfectly when he said whether you believe you can or you believe you can not. You are right. You’re right. So I encourage you today, to be kind to yourself, and build your self efficacy. So you can prove to yourself that you can.

14:51
Thank you.

Watch the next video: https://youtu.be/HnACsrdGZAI

Transcription

0:00
Self efficacy theory is a way to explain motivation, what drives some people to put forth a lot of effort and others to simply sit back and not even try? This is Cindy. Cindy has certain beliefs about her own ability to learn and complete goals. These beliefs are very specific to a particular situation in a particular context. For example, suppose Cindy has been asked to create a spreadsheet to track her company’s expenses, but she has never created a spreadsheet before. Will she tackle this task with gusto confident in her ability to learn the software? or will she approach the task with great anxiety and ultimately fail. Based on a person’s belief system, learners will perform in certain ways. A basic principle of self efficacy as at the higher a person self efficacy is, the more they believe they’re capable of accomplishing a task.

Unknown Speaker 0:57
The lower their self efficacy, the less capable they think they will be. People are less likely to attempt something with their full effort if their self efficacy is lower for that task, because people tend to only try things that they believe they will be successful in. Self Advocacy is influenced by several factors. The first factor is a person’s performance accomplishments. This is also referred to as personal mastery experiences. Performance accomplishments means how successful you have been with a task in the past. when encountering a challenge a person assesses how they have done with a similar task. Suppose Cindy was asked to learn PowerPoint recently, if she worked hard on this task and was successful, then herself advocacy for learning new computer programmes is high, and she’s more likely to put forth a strong effort again, because she believes that she has the aptitude to learn Excel as well. If Cindy struggled with the PowerPoint, and felt she was unable to master the programme, then her self efficacy for this type of task is very low, and she is less likely to persevere and work hard on learning Excel because she has already decided that she’s incapable of learning it. Ironically, her attitude towards her own learning can become a self fulfilling prophecy. She assumed she cannot do well and then her lack of effort results in a poor result reinforcing her belief that she cannot succeed in this type of task. On the other hand, if Cindy proceeds learning PowerPoint is too difficult, but still put forth high effort and achieve success, then her self efficacy will increase in this area, and she will be more likely to attack learning Excel with a high level of effort and focused. The second factor is vicarious experiences, which is when the learner observes other people’s experiences with the task. They are more impacted if the person they observe someone they perceive is more similar to themselves, such as appear. For example, if Cindy has observed a co worker successfully navigating Excel, she is more likely to have a higher self efficacy in regards to this task. Similarly, as Cindy saw her coworker struggling and failing at the task, Cindy’s own self advocacy will be lower because she was judging her own abilities based on what she observes is happening with her peer. Overall, vicarious experience is considered to be less powerful than performance accomplishments. third factor is verbal persuasion, which is the impact that others expectations can have on the learner.

3:27
These expectations must be expressed verbally and generally take the form of a pep talk. If our learner is told, I know you can do this and perhaps given some helpful tips, their self efficacy goes up. Coaching would be an example of verbal persuasion, people are led through suggestion into believing that they can cope successfully with what has overwhelmed them in the past. The effectiveness of verbal persuasion depends on how credible the learner feels the person encouraging them is. Additionally, verbal persuasion can also be negative, telling the learner they’re incapable of the task, which will cause doubt in the learner and lower their self efficacy. The fourth factor is physiological states, which is the emotional arousal a learner experiences and how they identify that arousal. Suppose Cindy has butterflies in her stomach, a physical sensation of arousal and discomfort. people rely partly on their state of physiological arousal to judge their anxiety and their vulnerability to stress. Because high arousal usually debilitates performance, individuals are more likely to expect failure if they are tense and agitated. So and Cindy has these sensations of butterflies in her stomach, how she interprets them as important. She might label these feelings as anxiety, which she might associate with failure, thus her self efficacy would decrease. But she might also label these feelings as excitement or anticipation, which she might associate with achievement. In that case herself advocacy would increase. Overall, a person’s self efficacy impacts the level of gold talents they set for them. In the amount of effort they put forth and their persistence in the face of difficulties. People with low self advocacy shy away from difficult tasks which they perceive as personal threats, they have low aspirations and weak commitment to the goals they choose to pursue. In contrast, those with high self efficacy approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, rather than as threats to be avoided, they set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them. self efficacy has relevance to many areas of research, but it is especially relevant in the area of educational research. Since higher self efficacy is associated with greater persistence, effort, and intrinsic interest in Academic Learning and Performance, educators have sought to discover how best to increase student’s self efficacy.

5:49
Researchers have found that students beliefs about their own abilities to learn determine their aspirations, level of motivation and academic accomplishments. Teachers beliefs in their own ability to teach also affects how successful their students will be. Similarly, impacting faculty’s beliefs about their collective efficacy influences school level achievement. Researchers have also found that parents positively impact a child’s self efficacy when they provide an environment that stimulates youngsters curiosity and allows for mastery experiences. peers also impact self efficacy because students and networks tend to be similar to one another, which enhances the likelihood of influence by modelling self efficacy is sometimes confused with other terms such as self esteem or self concept. The difference is that those terms deal with a general feelings about topics and self efficacy is about an attitude towards a specific task in a particular context. The key word is specific. A person’s self concept might be I’m pretty good at math, but a person’s self efficacy is about their belief in their ability for a specific task. For example, I can totally figure out this math worksheet. And that is self efficacy in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed this presentation.

Write down all your thoughts, views and opinions relating to why self-efficacy matters and its importance for the development of entrepreneurial skills. For example, you could draw a mind-map, an article, or a simple bullet point list to consolidate your knowledge gained from these videos.