Fostering SMART Goals in Your Students
A Teacher's Guide to Implementing Goal Orientation
Realistic.
When your students are settings goals for themselves, it is important that their goals are realistic. In order for their goals to be realistic, students must know their own ability to effectively perform a task. This is known as self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. You want your students to believe in themselves when they are setting their goals, however, you do not want your students to be over or under confident in their abilities.
Why self-efficacy is important:
Students with a strong sense of self-efficacy:
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View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered
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Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate
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Form a stronger commitment to their interests and activities
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Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments
Students with a weak sense of self-efficacy:
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Avoid challenging or difficult tasks
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Believe that they are incapable of completing difficult work
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Focus on personal failings and negative outcomes
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Quickly lose confidence in their personal abilities
How to encourage self-efficacy in your classroom according to educational psychologist, Albert Bandura:
1. Mastery Experiences
Bandura states that the most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences. This means that when a student performs a task successfully it will strengthen their sense of self-efficacy. However, the opposite can be true. If the student fails to perform a task successfully it can undermine and weaken their self-efficacy.
2. Modeling
Modeling is a common method of instruction and according to Bandura, can be extremely beneficial when building self-efficacy in your students. "Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers' beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable tasks."
3. Encouragement
Bandura asserted that encouragement and praise can help build self-efficacy. Through praise, you can give your students the confidence to complete a task. Positive speech and verbal encouragement helps students overcome self-doubt and helps them to focus on the task at hand.