Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulation

How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy could be the reason why third grader Lisa refuses to participate in group work. Maybe she feels  she is unable to perform the duties of her assigned role, so she simply does not try. If this is the case, this piece of information would be important. It could influence the way I would react to Lisa's off-task behavior. Some ways to help Lisa might include giving her one or two of the responsibilities of her assigned role that I know she will be able to accomplish and succeed in. This could boost her self-efficacy. Hopefully, she would see that she is able to succeed in this role and give the other responsibilities a try.

Self-Regulation
Self-Regulation is another important aspect of the social cognitive theory to consider with Lisa. She is doing a poor job at emotion regulation and self-monitoring. I also doubt she is using self-imposed contingencies. First, I would have Lisa set a clear goal for her participation in the group. Then, I might try having Lisa continuously monitor her behavior in the group and then evaluate her behavior and participation at the end of each group work session. We would then talk about evaluation, and I would tell her she should feel proud when she has done a good job working with the group. I would encourage her to use these and other self-regulating strategies.


Here's a video about developing self-regulating strategies. It focuses on writing, but these strategies can be used in other areas too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czNaUbeAZnA

Behaviorist and Constructivist Interventions to Misbehavior

I am again going to refer to the case study about third grader, Lisa. She is refusing to do her share of group work because she dislikes her assigned role in the group. In an earlier post, I described an intervention to this behavior that I might take, and looking back at it now, it seems the only behaviorist action I suggested was negative punishment. After trying a few different ways to get Lisa motivated, I suggested removing her from the group in an effort to decrease her off task behavior and increase her desire to work productively in a group. This is an example of negative punishment because I would take away the benefits of working with a group in an effort to decrease distracting and off task behavior.

I feel that it might have been more effective to include some sort of reinforcement. For example, I could praise Lisa every time she does do her job and is on task. Or as other groups are working, I might highlight the work of Lisa's classmates who have the same role that she has. She might see the importance of that role and be more motivated to do her job.

These interventions would be very different if I were looking at this situation through Constructivism. I would likely not give reinforcement or punishment. I would logically explain that there are consequences for her actions. I would ask Lisa how she thinks her actions affect her group. Once she realizes the problems her behavior causes, I would ask her to consider ways to fix this problem.

Here are some Constructivist alternatives to punishment and reinforcement. I found this very interesting.

 http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/practices/practice1devries.html

Metacognition and Problem Solving

Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive skills and one or more problem solving skills.

An interactive read aloud is one way teachers can model and explicitly teach metacognitive and problem solving skills. You can use a read-aloud to show students how to consider and connect to prior knowledge, to hypothesize, to question, to reread, and to reflect when reading on their own. We as teachers should be thinking aloud as we read aloud. We should be aware of our thought processes as we read, so we can model and explain them to our students. 

Teachers can also model problem solving skills in an interactive read aloud. Whenever conflict comes up in the story, the teacher could pause and ask the students to consider possible solutions. Teachers should also take this time to encourage their students to be creative and brainstorm about a new solutions to the problems in the story. 


I like how the teacher in this video tells her students to keep things in their "think bubbles" as they read the story. She is helping them learn how to use metacognition in kid friendly terms.