Reading reflection 1 | W4 Q1 | Discussion

Linnenbrink-Garcia and Patall(2014) have described six major theoretical frameworks from the literature of motivation research. I will be discussing the Social Cognitive Theory of self-efficacy posited by Bandura(1977). Self-efficacy is defined as people's evaluations of their skills to plan and carry out the actions required to achieve specific outcomes and performances (Linnenbrink-Garcia & Patall, 2014, p.91). There are four sources (mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and affective/physiological stats) interacting with ones’ experience and expectation(p. 92). The implications in an educational setting could be using reciprocal teaching in a team. For example, each student takes turns teaching the other student a portion of the subject. Students obtain direct exposure to the content while they prepare to teach the other student, as well as modeling the material when they present the lesson to their peers. This exercise gives students a sense of success and mastery over the subject and thus, boosts their collective self-efficacy. However, it could be difficult to develop each source and utilize all of them simultaneously in a specific situation. As well as, self-efficacy is malleable and can be changed by environmental influences case by case. For example, one can have high -efficacy in the subject of math but low in English literature.