Self Efficacy
Self efficacy is defined as the belief in ones capabilities to organize as well as to execute course of action that is essential in management of prospective situations thus its basically the way a person belief regarding his or her abilities to being successful in particular situations. In general terms, each individual person is capable of identifying what they desire to accomplish or change in their lives but also appreciate the fact that putting these plans into reality is not an easy task. It is in an attempt to attaining these goals that self efficacy becomes very critical as it pertains to how such tasks, goals and challenges are to be approached. Research has shown that people who have a strong sense of self efficacy tend to view changes as talks that can be mastered and tend to develop deep interest in activities they participate in. also, these people forms a very strong sense of commitment to activities and interests they participate in. moreover, they recover very quickly from setbacks and disappointments. On the other hand people with weaker self efficacy have the behavior of avoiding challenging tasks and have an ardent believe that such challenging tasks or situations are outside their capabilities. In addition to that they also focus on personal failures and other negative outcomes thus tend to loose their confidence when it comes to their personal abilities.
Self efficacy of an individual is developed over time and these beliefs begin forming during early childhood as children go through various experiences, situation and task and continue to grow through out person life as one acquires new skill, understanding and experiences. There are fur sources of self efficacy and they include the following mastery experiences, social modeling, social persuasion and psychological responses. Mastery experiences are regarded as one of the most effective ways that an individual can develop strong sense of efficacy. When an individual performs a task successfully one is able to strengthen one’s self efficacy where as failure to attain success also undermines and weakens it.
Another source of self efficacy is social modeling which involve witnessing other people complete task successfully. This serve to raise ones belief as it regards to attaining similar success. Moreover, through social persuasion individual get persuaded to believing that they got what it takes to succeeding in terms of skills and capabilities. This can be achieved through verbal encouragement from other thus help in overcoming of self doubt. Finally person emotional reactions and response to situations plays important role in self efficacy. By individuals learning on how to elevate mood and minimize stress while facing challenging task they are able to improve their sense of self efficacy .
According to Schunk, self efficacy plays an important role in students academic achievement and may even be used to predict academic achievement ad it thus affects the amount both students effort and persistence devoted to learning. This therefore call for education efforts academic strategies as well as teacher practices to be aimed as fostering the self concept of the student thus helping in raising self worth raising students academic achievement. On the other hand f student’s self concept belief results from one performance as opposed to being the cause then the education efforts should target at increasing the competence of the student instead of lay a focus on judgments of self worth.
Motivation
Motivation can be defined as phenomenon involving person’s goal seeking behavior and personal drives. In this context motivation is defined as the students aroused desire to participate in learning process. Motivation is a very important quality that should be present in students, school administrators, teachers, and other members of the community if the education system is to enable the education system in adequate preparation of young people to be in a position handle challenges and the demands presented by the current and future century. Generation and use of motivation varies with different groups. For instance motivation is essential in learning process of students, teacher need it if they are to be better teachers; parents need it to enable them to monitor their children’s educational progress and finally school administrators need motivation in order to guarantee that there is an n improvement in each of the school’s facet.
Motivation can be nurtured in various environments ranging from classroom, school and to home and students are likely to acquire a stronger motivation in classroom facilitating them to gain new knowledge. Students tend to perform better if classroom is made to be a place that can naturally motivate students. This can be attained if there exists a school culture that ensures that motivation to learn and academic success is respected expected and gets rewarded. Ideal motivating environment for students is one that students are able to love leaning for the sake of learning leading to exemplary academic achievement.
One of the most significant tasks of a teacher is to ensure arousal, regulation and sustenance of a student enthusiasm for leaning through the use of his motivating power while teaching. Teachers drive as it pertains to self motivation in a classroom involves harnessing of the learners drive which is very paramount in the student learning of motivation. There exists several categories and they include the following: instrumental motivation, achievement motivation, social motivation and instinct motivation and its possible that learner’s motivation can be dominated by more than one category of motivation at any given time.
Academic motivation is directly relates to educational growth in that motivation is basically as force that education systems can harness in order to encourage students abilities to learn and understand. In the context of educational setting motivation can either be an external force or an internal force. These factors play a vital role as it pertains to student learning and success in the educational setting.
Based on the intrinsic motivation theory motivation of an individual enamates from within an individual devoid of an eternal reward and students falling under this category tend to derive an internal reward through increased self esteem and sense of achievement especially after they attain their goals. These students desire to succeed is based on personal interests and derives satisfaction when they achieve a desired accomplishment. These students get motivated without any influence form external forces as it regards to their achievement thus their attempt to succeed is not motivated by receiving a reward. Therefore, educational growth and success of these types of students will not be improved neither through punishment or rewards and therefore should be accorded the appropriate consideration.
Consequences of intrinsic motivation
Students who succeed in classroom often operate under internal locus control thus tend to ignore bad grades or mistakes meaning that they are able to maintain a level of self esteem despite of their successes or failures and don’t blame external factors for their situations and therefore take responsibility of their own actions.
On the other hand, students who are extrinsically motivated require reinforcement in order to succeed and therefore reward and punishment system yields positive result on student’s educational growth. Students can be motivated through admiration of positive reinforcement for desired actions and negative consequences for undesired or negative behaviors. These group of students tend to perceive teachers, books and other external forces as the source of their failures thus are prone to believing that their failure is as result of the inabilities hence tend to give up if they fail to attain success continually. Therefore consdenring the fact that students are always different and this calls for application of different motivational techniques if an optima learning experiences is to be enhanced for all students.