Self-efficacy
What is it about?
Self-efficacy is referred to as the „judgement of one’s ability to perform a task within a specific domain.” Therefore, it is a task-specific judgement of one's ability and not about general feelings of self-worth. Furthermore, it is not just about believing in oneself but rather about having a realistic sense of one's strengths and weaknesses.
There are four main sources that may influence your child’s belief about their efficacy. Firstly, past performance, in other words personal accomplishments and success, can build self-efficacy as well as verbal persuasion in the form of words of encouragement. Psychological states such as our own responses and emotional reactions, moods or stress levels can have an impact on how we judge our ability. Aside from coming from past performance, verbal persuasion or psychological states, self-efficacy can also come from modeling. Seeing someone close and more importantly similar to themselves handling a comparable situation well or seeing them successfully complete a task, can make your child feel like they can deal with that challenge too. Therefore, a positive role model can be incredibly helpful in improving your child's efficacy. Moreover, competent models can teach useful and effective strategies.
There are four main sources that may influence your child’s belief about their efficacy. Firstly, past performance, in other words personal accomplishments and success, can build self-efficacy as well as verbal persuasion in the form of words of encouragement. Psychological states such as our own responses and emotional reactions, moods or stress levels can have an impact on how we judge our ability. Aside from coming from past performance, verbal persuasion or psychological states, self-efficacy can also come from modeling. Seeing someone close and more importantly similar to themselves handling a comparable situation well or seeing them successfully complete a task, can make your child feel like they can deal with that challenge too. Therefore, a positive role model can be incredibly helpful in improving your child's efficacy. Moreover, competent models can teach useful and effective strategies.
How to apply in everyday life?
- To improve the self-efficacy of your child, try to make sure they are presented with challenging yet manageable tasks that are mastery-oriented.
- Furthermore, give them specific feedback on their performance and encourage them that way. But make sure you give honest feedback based on their performance, otherwise they are quickly brought back to reality by being faced with disappointing and discouraging results.
- When they do fail sometime, support them with cognitive and metacognitive strategies and help them see that they just need to keep trying in order to succeed.
- Avoid verbal persuasion that might make them less engaged in a task.
Goals
Children should then grow up to have high self-efficacy and be persevering even if they have difficulties at first. In addition, they will believe in themselves and won’t give up easily. Moreover, they will actually do better in performance than children of equal ability simply due to their belief in their ability. If a task is difficult for them, they keep trying and put even more effort into it. Your children will be able to control stress and anxiety effectively and also feel like they are in control of the situation. They will have a greater sense of resilience and when faced with challenging tasks, they know how to use effective strategies and when it’s best to switch strategy or discard an unproductive one.
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