Procrastinating and Self-efficacy: Tracing Vicious and Virtuous Circles In Self-regulated Learning

“How self-efficacy sustains itself”

How a student perceives their self-efficacy, that is “the anticipation of success based on one’s own competencies”  greatly influences their motivation to learn.  Perceptions of self-efficacy are related to academic performance. Self-efficacy depends on previous experiences of success in academic tasks.  Educational researchers Sitzmanna and Yeo found that self-efficacy was a product of performance on previous experiences and not the driving force behind it.  If a student perceives himself to have high self-efficacy it can affect their performance in a positive way.  Likewise, if a student’s perceived self-efficacy is low, it can negatively affect their quality of studying and thereby affect their academic performance.  This can lead to a cycle which can lead to high or low achievement.

The article mentioned that according to Zimmerman’s cyclical-interactive theoretical model of self-regulated learning, there are three phases a student goes through: a forethought phase, a performance phase and a self-reflection phase.  In the forethought phase, students estimate their self-efficacy on a certain task.  They assess what it will take to complete the task.  It is in this phase that procrastination occurs as the students assess whether or not they fell adept to complete the task and they may perceive their goal achievement level as being pretty low. In the performance phase, students who are highly self-efficacious will use cognitive learning strategies at their disposal which will help them to succeed in completing the task successfully.   On the other hand, if the student doesn’t have many learning strategies, and if he or she anticipates failure, they may become tempted to avoid this failure to the point of avoiding the task altogether.  Such actions would then lead to a cycle repeated failure which could leave some students vulnerable and unable to self-regulate their learning.  In the self-reflection phase students perceptions are then reshaped.  Students who have a high degree of goal achievement due to their high level of perceived self-efficacy and their experiences of success will become more motivated when it comes to taking on new challenges.  

Allgaier A., Fink S., Lachner A., Nückles M. Wäschle K., Procrastinating and self-efficacy: Tracing 

          vicious and virtuous circles in self-regulated learning. Learning and Instruction 29 (2014) 103-

          114, Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.09.005

How Motivation and Engagement Predict Reading Comprehension Among Native English-speaking and English-learning Middle School Students with Disabilities In a Remedial Reading Curriculum

In this article, the role of motivation as a predictor of reading comprehension is investigated.  Worth mentioning is the fact that this is not studied very much despite its impact on the choices students make about reading. One of the questions this article examines is, what motivates some students to choose to read more often and for longer periods of time.  This is one of only a handful of studies that specifically addresses motivation & reading comprehension among ELL students and students with disabilities.  The guiding questions are:

            1) In the context of a remedial reading program, what is the role of motivation in

            predicting reading comprehension among students with disabilities?

            2) Does ELL status moderate any effects of motivation predicting reading

            comprehension?

The study in this article reports on motivation levels of 76 middle school aged English language learners with disabilities in an urban Northeastern school district in the United States.  It investigated whether intrinsic & extrinsic motivation and self-efficacy predicted comprehension outcomes. 

Extrinsic motivation is the motivation influenced by external elements, such as rewards, recognition, grades etc.  Intrinsic motivation involves students curiosity about reading and how important students perceive reading to be. Research has shown a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and reading comprehension, and a negative effect between extrinsic motivation and reading comprehension.  This article notes that intrinsic motivation has been a predictor of reading comprehension among White American students, but not among Black and Latino students. 

Self-efficacy is another construct used to understand motivation in students.  Students with self-efficacy, according to the article, “participate more readily, work harder, and persevere longer in the face of difficulties, and achieve at a higher level.”

Patrick Proctor, C., Daley, S., Louick, R., Leider, C.M., & Gardner, G.L. (2014).  How motivation           and engagement predict reading comprehension among native English-speaking and English-

      learning middle school students with disabilities in a remedial reading curriculum. Learning &           Individual Differences, 36 76-83. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2014.10.014