The importance of fostering self-efficacy at any age

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” –Norman Vincent Peale

Early in my career as an educator, I decided to complete a program that would increase my level of certification.  As part of this program, there was an expectation to complete a semester of student-teaching, however, I was already a full-time educator.  Therefore, the university “powers-that-be” decided that as an alternative, I would spend two days in a classroom and school outside of my own teaching district where I would be evaluated by a university representative and the cooperating classroom teacher.

It was established that on the first full day, I would observe the teacher and students.  Then, on the second full day, I would be in charge of all instruction while the university representative and the classroom teacher evaluated my performance. 

At first, I celebrated this plan.  I had been successfully teaching for over ten years.  My career, up to that point, had been exclusively completed in challenging classroom settings with students of multiple grade levels and various identities, such as ADHD, intellectual disabilities, as well as emotional and behavioral disability.  How hard could the evaluation be? Then, I read the fine print.

 This two-day evaluation period would occur mid-May. (You don’t have to be an educator to imagine what a May classroom is like.)  And, if I did not receive high marks on this evaluation, I would have to forgo my teacher salary fall semester in order to student-teach in another district.

The closer the evaluation date, the more my inner critic’s voice grew.  What if you and the unknown classroom teacher have diametrically opposed philosophies of teaching? What if the teacher doesn’t welcome/like you?  What if the students don’t like you? You know how students tend to behave with a substitute teacher. 

 On the day of the evaluation, my heart pounded, my stomach churned, and my nerves were tightly wound.  I soaked my clothes with sweat, not only because there was no air conditioning in this school, but also due to the immense pressure I felt.  By the end of the second day, I was physically exhausted from the stress.  Fortunately, I passed with flying colors, but what if I failed?  Where would I be now, and how would it have affected my future trajectory?

Life is full of challenges similar, if not greater, to this experience.  I can’t help but wonder about the importance of self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy in determining the outcomes of such events.  While each term represents different concepts of “self,” the interplay of the three is one of the keys to personal growth throughout our adult years.

Specifically, self-esteem is more about personal feelings of value and worth. Self-confidence, in contrast, is a person’s overall belief in self across a wide-array of settings; whereas, self-efficacy is more context-specific. For example, a person can have a high degree of self-confidence in their role as a student, professional, or athlete, but have much lower levels of self-confidence when it comes to social situations or other areas of life.  Nonetheless, this same person could still overall have a fairly high level of self-esteem.  Why is that?

What is self-efficacy?

Research indicates that those with an overall higher sense of self-efficacy tend to have higher self-esteem, but what is self-efficacy? Self-efficacy, as defined by Abert Bandura, “is the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.”  This belief in an individual’s own abilities plays a significant role in how one thinks, behaves, and feels about their place in the world.

A person with a high sense of self-efficacy:

• Views challenges as something to be mastered rather than feared
• Recovers faster from failure 
• Believes they can control threatening situations   
• Develops deep interests and stronger sense of commitment to their interests/activities
• Are less likely to experience depression and typically have lower levels of stress.

Whereas, a person with a low sense of self-efficacy:

• Views difficult tasks as threats, increasing their desire to avoid them  
• Sees challenges as tasks that demonstrate their deficiencies rather than their strengths 
• Lose faith in their own abilities after a perceived failure
• Experience higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress

Four Ways Self-Efficacy Develops

 

Therefore, it is important to find ways to boost self-efficacy, especially during those formative teen and young adult years.  Bandura identified four ways this can be accomplished:

• Mastery experiences: Successfully completing challenging tasks.  While it is important to experience and learn from failure, successes boost self-confidence.
• Vicarious experiences or social modeling: Watching another person, similar to you, complete a challenging task, increases a person’s belief that they can accomplish the same task modeling after that person
• Social/verbal persuasion: Receiving sincere verbal encouragement raises a person’s belief that they can accomplish a challenge
• Psychological and emotional responses: Negative emotions, physical responses, emotional state, mood, stress can all impact a person’s abilities to complete new tasks.  However, it is more how the responses are interpreted and perceived that can be a determining factor in successfully completing a difficult task.

How to Strengthen Self-efficacy at Any age

For educators and parents, these are important considerations when interacting with children, teens, and young adults.  However, it is still important to strengthen one’s self-efficacy, even as we age, in order to better deal with new life challenges as they arise. 

Here are some suggested ways to foster self-efficacy at any age:

•  Celebrate Successes no matter how small. Work on setting goals that force you to stretch, but are realistically achievable.  With each goal achieved, a stronger belief in your abilities is forged. 
• Observe and connect with others. Seeing, engaging with, and modeling others who are either working towards similar goals as you, or who have completed similar goals, increases your belief that you can accomplish similar results.
• Monitor mental health, thoughts, and emotions. Some people may need to work with a professional to manage positive mental health, while others simply need to hone a few mindfulness skills to manage thoughts and emotions. Determine tools and techniques that help manage feelings of anxiety and stress that arise during difficult tasks in order to feel more confident to achieve desired outcomes.
• In a similar vein, practice self-compassion and positive self-talk. Words matter, even the ones silently spoken in our heads. Work on quieting the inner critic when it rears its ugly head with words, phrases, and mantras that promote self-belief.
• Surround yourself with a solid support system who will offer genuine positive affirmations.  This can be tricky as you don’t want insincerity, flattery, and words spoken out of a sense of obligation.  Instead, connect with a few key mentors, friends, and allies who are reliable, know you, and will offer authentic feedback and affirmations.

Final Thoughts on Self-Efficacy

Traversing life’s ups and downs isn’t always easy, and it’s made more difficult for those with lower levels of self-efficacy.  By continuously developing a stronger sense of self-efficacy, the more we are able to handle life’s proverbial curve balls.  In fact, it might allow us to handle them with a bit more grace and equanimity.