What is self- efficacy?

In our action research study we are going to be measuring student self-efficacy.  So what exactly is student self-efficacy?  Self-eficacy refers to how students feel about themselves in regards to their capabilities.  It is the belief that they can or cannot complete a certain task successfully.  This differs from self-esteem which deals with students' perception of their worth or self-value. However, self-efficacy can affect self-esteem.  It is also common that self-efficacy can affect student achievement in school.

So how are we going to measure this?  Well, after multiple discussions our team has decided on a one-group pretest/posttest method to complete our research.  We will measure student self-efficacy through the survey previously posted.  We will then assign students to groups of mixed readiness levels to work on an assignment to be graded.  After the assignment is complete, we will measure student self-efficacy within the content area a second time through the same survey.  The second survey will include additional space for students to add any comments on how working in the group helped or hindered their achievement in the content.

Here is what Colleen, Jane, and I came up with this afternoon. This survey will be administered to our students to gauge their self-efficacy in our respective content area.

DI in Gifted Students

Despite all the research I have recently compiled on DI, I still struggled to understand how High-Low groups benefit the high group in differentiated instruction. If these students aren't being challenged and are forced to work at a lower level, how does this benefit them? I believed that these students needed to be pushed to a higher level in order for their knowledge to expand. However, after reading this article I have started to understand the importance. These gifted students need the variety just as much as every other student. Take a look!

http://www.nsgt.org/differentiating-learning-for-gifted-students/

Literature Review

We've been working on compiling a literature review over the past few weeks. We've each identified a source focusing on differentiated learning and its effects. Through this process the team has found that there is not one sure answer about differentiation - it largely relies on the students in the classroom, and how the teacher chooses to meet their many needs. While frustrating, we believe that this complexity will serve us well as we come from different content areas and different schools. The broadness will allow us to create a plan based off our actual students, and our results will be specific to our classrooms. It is important to note that what I end up implementing in my classroom will look very different than what Dana will implement in her classroom. Though Kevin and I have the same students now differentiation would still appear differently in a social studies classroom than an ELA classroom because our students aren't the same in every single class - or even in every unit. As a team, we will conduct surveys to gauge the self-efficacy of our students in our content areas, and build from there. We will compare the beginning results with the end results to see how differentiation affects a student's image of himself/herself in a given content area.