The origins of the children’s story about the little engine that pulled a stranded train over difficult terrain aren’t exactly clear, but the story is believed to have first appeared around 1906. Although there have been many iterations of this tale, the underlying theme is always the same.In the story, a long train of freight cars needs to be pulled up and over a steep hill. When the train cars ask the larger engines to make the trip, they all make up excuses about why the job is too difficult. They won’t even try. But, when the much smaller, little blue engine is asked, he replies “I think I can!” and it is this attitude that pulls the chain of train cars up and over the difficult incline.
A person’s belief about their capabilities to achieve a goal is called Self-Efficacy. Albert Bandura of Stanford University has done a great deal of research on self-efficacy and he describes how a person with high self-efficacy will take on greater risks, have higher motivation and recover more quickly after failures or setbacks. People with low self-efficacy, on the other hand, avoid difficult tasks and can become stressed or depressed after not accomplishing a goal.
It is easy to see how having a high self-efficacy would be beneficial to a student, especially a student in a highly competitive environment. So what can parents, teachers and tutors do to help raise a students’ self-belief? Here are some suggestions based on Bandura’s research:
1) Expose students to many experiences where they overcome obstacles and succeed after significant effort: To build one’s sense of self-efficacy, they must see that hard work can lead to success. If success is always quick and easy they can be easily discouraged by failure. On the other hand, if tasks are too difficult and a student faces too many failures, this can have a negative effect on their self-belief. It is important to identify areas where mastery can be obtained (with effort). This helps build a sense of resiliency. An interesting sidebar is that many authors of literary classics were rejected countless times before being published but with high degrees of self-efficacy, they did not let these failures stall their desire to be published.
2) Introduce students to vicarious experiences of success: It is important for students to see peers with similar capabilities succeed. By seeing people similar to them reach their goals it raises their belief that they have what it takes to succeed as well. The more the student believes there is a similarity in their skills and capabilities, the more these vicarious experiences can raise their belief in themselves.
3) Build a Student’s Confidence with Verbal Persuasion: If students are told by people they admire and respect, that they have the capabilities to master a challenge, they can be bolstered to try harder. When others believe in the student, the student will in turn believe in himself. Students should also realize that their accomplishments are being measured against their own achievements and not others.
4) Reduce stress and encourage a positive mood: How someone interprets their emotional state can relate to their self-efficacy. A person with high self-efficacy may interpret a high state of arousal as energizing whereas a person with low self-efficacy may interpret that state as feeling stressed. It is important how a person perceives their emotional and physical reactions to a situation. The more a person can view these states as positive, the more it can play a positive role on their self-belief. Having learning experiences by challenging but fun can be a valuable key.
There is a growing body of research that indicates a relationship with a student’s self-efficacy and their academic performance. ThoughtLink realizes the value in having high self-efficacy tutors. These tutors believe in the student’s ability to attain their goals and work on creating the optimum environment for high student achievement.
