Increasing Student Mathematics Self-Efficacy Through Teacher Training

Teachers can modify their instructional strategies with minimal training and effort, and this can result in increases in their students’ self-efficacy. Self-efficacy judgments are based on four sources of information: an individual's own past performance, vicarious experiences of observing the performances of others, verbal persuasion that one possesses certain capabilities, and physiological states. Individuals use these four sources of information to judge their capability to complete future tasks. Teachers who capitalize on the influence of the strongest of these sources—past performances, observations of others as models, and verbal persuasion—produce more confident students. The following instructional strategies increase student self-efficacy: • Reviewing lesson accomplishments from the previous day, posting the current lesson's objectives prior to instruction, drawing attention to the lesson objectives as they are covered, and reviewing the lesson objectives at the end of the lesson. • Asking students to record each day on a calendar something new they learned that day or something at which they excelled. • Prompting students who perform poorly to attribute their failures to lack of effort and encouraging them to try harder. • Drawing students’ attention to their growth and complimenting them on their specific skills. • Using student models early to demonstrate some aspects of a lesson to remind them that other students like themselves are mastering the material and therefore they can master it also. Teachers who use these strategies on a daily basis produce students who are more confident in their academic skills.