Module 9

Final Blog

             The first reading this week is from Pajares (2006).  “Academic self-efficacy influences cognitive strategy use and self-regulation through the use of metacognitive strategies, and self-efficacy is associated with in-class seat work and homework, exams and quizzes, and essays and reports” (p.343).  Due to its considerable influences on learning, teachers should pay enough attention to protect and cultivate their students’ self-efficacy beliefs.  Children are more fragile than adults.  They do not have much life experiences.  In China, most of the families only have one child.  The only child is so precious that their parents inclined to spoil and praise him all day.  When these children come to school, they still expect the same treatment from teachers and other students.  Failure might be such a strange feeling to them.  My10-year-old nephew hates to take his English classes because his English grades are relatively lower than other subjects.  He said that he can never learn English.  It is hard to identify which one is the reason and which one is the result, his lower grades or lower self-efficacy.  At this key point, teachers and parents should play their roles to rebuild their confidence of learning.  Teachers should clarify to students that people have different paces of study a new thing, and they can learn eventually as long as they keep trying.  If the students who show low self efficacy is not rare in a class, maybe it is time for teachers to adjust their instructional methods, homework arrangement for these students.  Patience of teachers is always required especially to students who start to get in touch with new knowledge. 

            However, lowering the learning standards will not be a good choice in the long run.  Dweck (2006) stated that  “lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise”, which explains the negative effect of Chinese parents who over spoiled their only kids.  Dweck also pointed that “simply raising standards…without giving students the means of reaching them…just pushes the poorly prepared or poorly motivated students into failure ant out of school”.  Setting higher standards is a good way to help students to raise their zone of proximal development.  But as Dweck claimed that teachers need to be fair to all students and care about the changes of their students. 

             Hard working is emphasized by Pajares (2006), Dweck (2006) and Gladwell (2008).  I often hear Chinese parents praise the smartness of their children but not their effort.  One negative but popular thought is that people who smart does not have to work hard and who work hard just because they are not smart enough.  Children who are influence by this thought will be easily met the problem of low self efficacy.  They are too easy to accept that they are not able to do that without even another trying.  Pajares suggested that teachers and parents should “praise effort and persistence, not ability”, which I believe not only influence the child being praised, but all the other students about what is more valuable.