Rachel Sarnoff

An affective state that I adopted into my own Practice Framework based on its prominence in the CCSR literature review is a sense of self-efficacy, or a student’s belief in his or her ability to succeed. Self-efficacy is an important determinant of academic success because “when students believe they are likely to succeed in meeting academic demands in a classroom, they are much more likely to try hard and to persevere in completing academic tasks, even if they find the work challenging or do not experience immediate success” (Farrington et al., 2012, p.29). Research widely demonstrates that this affective response is largely cultivated by teachers, which makes it a particularly good focus for the topic of my classroom-based inquiry (Osterman, 2000).  According to Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura, who initially coined the term in the field of social-psychology, “the perception of self-efficacy is influenced by four factors: mastery experiences, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and somatic and emotional states” (1994, p.2).  In considering the ways in which I can cultivate a sense of self-efficacy in my students, I will use Bandura's framework to guide my exploration of the ways in which my actions might make my students' believe that they can be successful.