 Hi, my name is Tracy Tegahome-Spinoza, and today we're going to be looking at Learner's Productive Course of Action, and specifically at self-efficacy, and what does this mean through the lens of mind, brain, health, and education? If we look at basic definitions of self-efficacy, we consider self-perception, or the way that we define our own beliefs about our capabilities to produce or to achieve things. So it's not only how we think about ourselves, but basically how we feel about ourselves and the types of beliefs we attach to. So self-efficacy can be measured at a cognitive level, how we think about ourselves, motivational level, affective level, like how we feel about ourselves, and how we choose certain courses of action. And you can basically look at self-efficacy like pretty much everything from the things that happen to you in your external environment to the things you do yourself from within. And so one of Van Dure's greatest contributions is looking at self-efficacy theory as a core part of motivational structures. So we look at things that related to how we perform in the world, vicarious experiences, how we live by looking at other people's lives and comparing ourselves to their lives. Physiological feedback, so how we get information from the outside world. And this will include, believe it or not, the emotional states that we have because emotions will trigger certain chemicals, which will trigger certain kinds of physiological reactions like our stomach might tighten up or our throat might get dry or legs feel weak. And self-efficacy also relates to verbal persuasion. This can be from others, but it can also be self-talk. The way we hear our inner voice telling us, you know, yes you can do it, yes you can do it, or oh you're going to fail again, you know, what is the verbal persuasion that might influence us to believe or not believe that we are capable of achieving. And self-efficacy can also be seen as being influenced by others. So in this model, the same things that we were just talking about vicarious learning and all the rest of it, are things that happen as an output after we have had exchanges or learning moments with other people or social interactions or a peer-based learning community influences on our own self-perception. So the way we think of ourselves is a big mixture of how we have already internalized who we think we are and we either confirm things about ourselves or look for change in ourselves and also how we interact with the outside world. So here's a couple of concrete examples about behaviors, like for example, smoking cigarettes, what does that have to do with self-efficacy? Well it's kind of interesting to see that some kinds of self-destructive behaviors have a really tight link to self-efficacy. So self-efficacy modulates, neural correlates in the brain related to the craving for smoking, for example. So neural networks in the brain are actually changed by the level of self-belief that you have or self-efficacy, I can do this or I can't do this. So basically we see that higher self-efficacy means you have higher self-control. But if you have low self-efficacy and you have low self-control, then you end up smoking. So there is a link, believe it or not, to self-efficacy and behaviors or self-destructive behaviors like smoking. And in another example, which is not really within your own control, smoking is a choice, right? But PTSD is a reflection of having had a traumatic experience, right? So post-traumatic stress disorder and self-efficacy are also related. So some people, after a truly stressful encounter, may continue to experience that high level of stress, right? Basically related to the idea that you don't have good coping mechanisms. You aren't able to handle the stress well. So low levels of self-efficacy are related to higher rates of PTSD, whereas other people may decide that they have different kinds of coping strategies. They might go to counseling or they might exercise or do mindfulness. And so they actually take on the challenge of PTSD in a very different way than succumbing to the self-belief that you can't manage it successfully. And this can be seen in our context within teaching, for example, when we think about self-efficacy and academic achievement. There was a huge meta-analysis done trying to understand the influence of academic self-efficacy on academic performance. So if you think you can do well, do you actually do well? And what's fascinating to see is, yep, high self-efficacy leads to higher self-regulation, which in turn leads to better academic achievement. So self-efficacy is a very big deal when it comes down to success on various levels in our daily life as well as in school success. So one big message to take away from this, if you look at brain studies on self-efficacy, you'll see that there's a lot going on here as far as either confirming or breaking cycles. So we know that success begets success and failure begets failure. So if you are one of those people who has a high level of self-efficacy, you consider that failure is, well, it's just another challenge. I'm bound to do better the next time. And you can break that downward cycle of failure. However, if you're somebody with low self-efficacy, then when you begin to fail, you say, well, I knew that was going to happen. And then because you feel that you're not able to do things to counteract this negative downward spiral, you continue to go downward and you continue to fail. And then you say, oh, see, I proved it. You know, I wasn't ever, you know, I wasn't able to do this. So we know that self-efficacy breaks the downward cycle of failure, high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy simply confirms this cycle of failure. So big idea, the big questions for us are, you know, what can teachers do to improve effort regulation or deep processing strategies in order to enhance self-efficacy? Does it matter how we have relational contact with our students? Well, there's two big ways that we can actually do something about a student's level of self-efficacy. One is to be a model. A teacher's own self-efficacy influences students' self-efficacy. So there's lots of studies that show this, right? And strategies, mastery teaching rather than performance assessment actually also helps a student confirm higher levels of self-efficacy, mainly because they're able to achieve more because intelligence is not a matter of, you know, just a binary success or no success. You're actually able to show progress throughout your learning stages. So what would the basic recommendations be in this sense? That if you have teachers that use mastery processes as opposed to performance standards and if teachers themselves have a high level of self-efficacy, that can turn into student's self-efficacy, which turns into student achievement. So when we get together, I'm going to ask you to think about this combination of words, you know, how is self-efficacy related to self-belief and how is that related to self-control or self-regulation and how does that actually lead to self-fulfilling prophecies or self-perceptions that we have of ourselves? Think about that. The last big idea I want to leave you with is that while an individual teacher's self-perception does have an influence on student's self-perception, an even more important idea is that collective teacher self-efficacy, that is that the group of teachers within a school community, for example, or within a department or within a certain area, this group has a greater power than the individuals. Definitely, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So while you might have pockets of individual teachers with high self-efficacy that may be helping students along, that's great. But what really changes the entire learning environment is when you have staff, a group of teachers that actually all believe in themselves their ability to help students learn, that in turn has a hugely powerful, perhaps the most important impact on student learning outcomes of all of the different interventions that John Haddy had a look at. So it's actually well off the charts. If you talk about this zone of desired effects or the things that will happen to a kid with an average teacher, the things that happened with really good teachers, well actually well off the chart is when you have collective teacher self-efficacy that has the greatest effect size influencing student learning outcomes. So the teachers as a whole, the collective group, has a huge impact on positive change in student achievement. So I'll leave you with those ideas. I'm looking forward to all of your questions when we come to class this week. Take care.