Self-Efficacy and the Apprehensive Writer: A Look into What Shapes the Confidence of a Writer
For any and all writers, the amount of confidence maintained throughout the writing process can both benefit and harm the writer. For the apprehensive writer, especially, this element, nested in each stage of the writing process, can seriously hinder his or her ability to perform well and accomplish the task he or she set out to achieve. The idea of self-efficacy in the writing process is prominent in many settings, but also develops from many sources. Many writers’ transformations from being apprehensive to being healthily confident writers can be sparked by several sources, including the writing instructor, peers, the writing environment and circumstances, and most importantly by the writers themselves.
First, it is important to understand the concept of self-efficacy as it relates to both creative and academic writers. Self-efficacy is a concept first discussed by Albert Bandura, a psychologist of human social behaviors, who defines the term in his abstract to a study in Self-Efficacy as
“people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave. Such beliefs produce these diverse effects through four major processes. They include cognitive, motivational, affective and selection processes” (Bandura 8).
In the case of the writer, these beliefs about their capabilities are very impressionable by both internal and external factors and appraisals of their work, and for the apprehensive writer, these appraisals must be nurtured and developed into positive opportunities for growth.
One of the most prominent sources of encouragement and development of self-efficacy in the writing process is the instructor or mentor assisting the writer throughout the process. As a figure of influence respected by the writer, especially in an academic setting, the instructor has ample opportunity to develop writers from apprehensive ones to ones who are confident about their work. Frank Pajares, Margaret Johnson, and Ellen Usher, in their article entitled Sources of Writing Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Elementary, Middle, and High School Students, assert that
“for teachers to foster and nurture their students’ self-efficacy—and through these beliefs raise their academic competence across subjects—they must first attend to the sources underlying them… only by understanding the genesis of self-beliefs can educators engage in practices… aimed at nurturing adaptive self-conceptions or eradicating maladaptive ones” (Pajares, Johnson, and Usher 106).
These researchers go on to discuss the reasons a student writer, at any level, might be apprehensive, noting that “mastery experience,” one of four sources of self-efficacy delineated by Bandura, is the most influential contributor to a student’s sense of self-efficacy as a measurement or appraisal of the writer’s own previous work (106). Within an instructional setting, this means that the nature of an instructor’s response to assignments can either nurture the apprehensive writer’s confidence or severely impede their growth in confidence. If an instructor is harshly and unnecessarily critical of a student’s writing, that negative feedback from a respected figure of knowledge and experience could potentially cause the writer to feel inadequate, and therefore apprehensive, about their writing.
The same concept of the instructor as a mentor who influences the self-efficacy, or confidence, of the writer is further explored in other articles such as Jason Chen and Ellen Usher’s article Profiles of the sources of science self-efficacy, which analyzes the factors that lead to apprehensiveness and deterrence to the sciences. Using Bandura’s four sources of self-efficacy, the authors also explain another aspect of the instructor’s influence over a student’s sense of confidence in their work, that of “verbal and social persuasions.” Chen and Usher, in a similar analysis to Pajares, Johnson, and Usher’s study, state that “Encouraging feedback and judgments bolster students' self-efficacy to perform a task, whereas deflating messages undermine it… these deflating messages might actually be more effective in lowering self-efficacy than encouraging messages are at raising it” (Chen, Usher 11). The effects the teacher can have in light of verbal and social persuasions, both negative and positive, however, are small compared to the effects of feedback from peers and friends on a writer’s self-efficacy.
For example, Pajares and Usher, two of the leading researchers in academic self-efficacy and writing, discuss yet another of Bandura’s sources of self-efficacy in Sources of Self-Efficacy in School: Critical Review of the Literature and Future Directions—the influence of “vicarious experience.” The concept of “vicarious experience,” according to Pajares and Usher, is a student’s notion of their own success or failure based on competitive performance and their assessment of the performance of those around them—their classmates and even older siblings. The researchers explore this concept at length, and determine that “In many academic endeavors, there are no absolute measures of proficiency. Hence, students gauge their capabilities in relation to the performance of others,” and proceed to give the example of a student’s reception and interpretation of a quiz score. Without the comparison of her score to those of her classmates, she cannot assess the quality of her score, but if she does know that her score was lower than many of her classmates’ scores, then that knowledge and assessment become detrimental to her sense of self-efficacy because of her comparison to students who may have performed better than she did (Pajares, Usher 753). This element of peer-based influence over a student’s analysis of their own performance is easily translated to any grade level and any assignment, certainly lengthy essays, and can significantly boost that student’s confidence, but can also increase any pre-existing notion of apprehensiveness. The results of this influence can and will, in turn, influence the results of future performance by the student, either with an improvement due to increased self-efficacy, or with regressive implications because of the rise of apprehension.
This aspect of competitive comparison to peers as a constituent of academic self-efficacy is also very prevalent among writing instructors, and is widely discussed by academics. Since these instructors must also carry a certain amount of confidence when managing a classroom, teaching abstract concepts, and even when assessing student assignments, all while burying any signs of apprehension about their own performance, it is important to understand the ways in which a writing instructor experiences the similar effects of Bandura’s sources of self-efficacy. David Morris and Ellen Usher, in their article Developing teaching self-efficacy in research institutions: A study of award-winning professors, study the development in self-efficacy of twelve professors at research-based institutions, and the researchers use the professors’ statements to better understand and interpret the correlation between the professors’ views of themselves and the ways in which they perform more effectively and efficiently on the job. After performing the case study using a questionnaire, the two researchers found that the resulting sources of self-efficacy, as defined by Bandura, were predominantly either “mastery experience,” “social persuasions,” or some combination of the two factors, based on example the professors provided (Morris, Usher 237). For writing instructors, the self-efficacy acquired from “mastery experience” might cover an array of possibilities, from awarded research grants, publications in literary magazines or scholarly journals, and perhaps even other inspirational comments they received from their own writing instructors in college. Because the recognition they receive for accomplishments such as these is so prestigious in the social world of academia, professors of any subject area are more confident both as instructors in the classroom and as researchers in the field due to the “social persuasion” aspect of peer reviewed articles and the feedback they receive from colleagues. With a healthy amount of self-efficacy, the professor not only becomes more engaging with students in the classroom, but also garners respect; therefore, the student writer is influenced by and strives to follow the professor’s example of self-efficacy and enthusiasm about a topic or assignment. This transaction between the professor and the student easily causes the student’s own apprehension to diminish and leaves only room for improvement in self-efficacy because the professor is more likely to want to develop the student’s potential. Specifically in the realm of writing instruction, a trait like that is invaluable to the instruction of an already apprehensive writer, who might just need the motivation of that “one professor” who genuinely cares about the instruction and success of the writer both in the classroom and outside the classroom.
The fourth and final source of self-efficacy, a person’s “emotional state,” can also have a significant impact on their abilities, or perceived abilities, as a writer. Bandura’s concept of a person’s “emotional state” becomes an internally reflective source of improvement of the person’s sense of self-efficacy, according to Barry Zimmerman’s article, “Self-Efficacy and Educational Development,” included in Bandura’s Self-efficacy in Changing Societies. He tells the reader that “encouraging students to set their own goals improved not only their efficacy beliefs but their commitment to attaining them as well,” and the improvement of the child’s belief in their self-efficacy comes from the child’s internal emotional response to motivation (Bandura, Zimmerman 209). In effect, if the student writer is motivated to perform a task to the best of their ability, then they will take pride and ownership in their writing, thereby triggering an even stronger emotion of happiness—therefore self-efficacy—when the writing instructor praises them for their hard work, and hopefully, successful writing.
Additionally, in Frank Pajares and Dale Schunk’s article concerning The Development of Academic Self-Efficacy, the two researchers explore the developmental role of self-appraisal over the course of a student’s education and the way that a student’s perception of themselves can improve self-efficacy and, eventually, future academic performance. They claim that
“In self-efficacy research it is not uncommon for children to feel highly efficacious about accomplishing difficult tasks; even being provided with feedback indicating low performance may not decrease self-efficacy (Schunk, 1995). Less frequently, children underestimate their capabilities and believe that they cannot acquire basic skills” (Schunk, Pajares 8).
As Pajares and Schunk explain in this passage, the internal “emotional state” also becomes a source of self-efficacy with the student’s high self-appraisal upon the completion of a tedious or long-term task. This proves especially true for writing students who, regardless of the feedback they might receive from both peers and professors, feel a high sense of accomplishment and pride in the completion of a long academic essay, or even in writing the long-awaited final page of a personal project such as a novel. This personal pride and joy that comes with positive self-appraisal therefore, of course, boosts the writer’s self-efficacy, inherently making them perform better on their next writing assignment.
Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy and the four sources of motivation for the improvement of that self-efficacy, as proven by the literature in the field, clearly apply to a broad range of aspects of academia, especially where writing is concerned. The effects of self-efficacy, both on the student writer and on the professor, are innumerable, and can be traced to many sources, including positive feedback, prestigious titles or compliments, the motivation of healthy competition among peers, and principally, the internal sense of self-appraisal and pride in the accomplishment of the completion of a piece of writing. These sources each serve as a motivator to the apprehensive writer, who might be influenced by their own willpower to improve their self-efficacy as a writer, as well as the encouragement of others, especially mentors and writing instructors. For this reason, it is important that the professors also maintain a healthy sense of self-efficacy in order to better engage with students, encourage them in their academic endeavors, and motivate them to seek constant improvement in future writing assignments as well as their own personal writing, therefore leading to the student’s (hopefully) genuine expression of more confidence, pride, and enthusiasm in their work.
Works Cited
Bandura, Albert, and Barry Zimmerman. "Self-efficacy and Educational Development." Self-efficacy in Changing Societies. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. 202-248. Print.
Bandura, Albert. "Self-Efficacy Defined." Self-efficacy Defined. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/BanEncy.html>.
Chen, Jason, and Ellen Usher. "Profiles of the Sources of Science Self-efficacy." Learning and Individual Differences 24 (2013): 11-21. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif>.
Kirk, Karin. "Student Motivations and Attitudes: The Role of the Affective Domain in Geoscience Learning." Self-Efficacy. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/efficacy.html>.
Pajares, Frank, Johnson, Margaret J., & Usher, Ellen L. "Sources of Writing Self-efficacy Beliefs of Elementary, Middle, and High School Students." Research in the Teaching of English 42.1 (2007). Print.
Usher, Ellen, and Frank Pajares. "Sources of Self-efficacy in School: Critical Review of the Literature and Future Directions." Review of Educational Research 78 (2008): 751-96. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://rer.sagepub.com/content/78/4/751>.
Wigfield, A., J. Eccles, and Dale Schunk. "The Development of Academic Self-Efficacy."Development of Achievement Motivation. San Diego: Academic, 2001. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. < http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/SchunkPajares2001.PDF>.