By focusing on mastery and identity, every learner (and teacher) can become an active achiever.
That is according to Dr Rhonda Bondie, a lecturer on education in several programs including the Harvard Teacher Fellows (HTF) program and David Dockterman, an expert on learner variability and personalised learning.
Bondie says one strategy educators can use to promote self-efficacy is to direct students to reflect on their performance using explicitly provided ‘quality criteria’.
“I like to think of quality criteria as having two components: Must Haves — the requirements – and Amazings – the added qualities that challenge students [especially early finishers] to go beyond the requirements,” Bondie told Harvard University’s Usable Knowledge.
“Must Haves ensure that all students are focused on reaching the required standards or objectives. For example, Must Haves may include required vocabulary, using the word ‘because’, or supporting ideas with evidence.”
Amazings criteria, on the other hand, provide room to extend expectations, ensuring that all students are challenged. Amazings may include using advanced vocabulary, providing alternate strategies or perspectives, and including all group members in a response.
Bondie says that by developing the Must Haves and Amazings categorizations, “teachers can assign criteria to all, some, and/or individual learners to ensure that students with a wide range of abilities feel stretched while completing a common task.”
And these criteria offer a concrete way for students to notice their actions and how their efforts have led to learning.
Foster a culture that rewards growth
Dockterman said strategies to promote self-efficacy, for students or teachers, should consider both the individual and the social context.
“Ideally, we want to give individuals a window into their growing competence, while fostering a culture that rewards growth and effort,” he told Usable Knowledge.
For students, teachers should focus on tracking and rewarding progress, he said.
“A curriculum is broken down into a progression of learning objectives, and teachers can often break down those objectives and tasks further,” Dockterman said.
“Show students where they have developed mastery, and then focus them on the next step in the path, working to keep them in their individual zones of proximal development.”
Dockterman said it is important that teachers keep the focus on “accumulated mastery”.
“Look what I can do now!” — rather than on distance to completion [or, “What’s the fastest way to be done with this?”].”
“Like their students, teachers learn best when they feel they belong to a group that honors and supports growth — where asking for help to improve practice is a sign of a productive, strategic learner, rather than an incompetent performer.”