Perceived self-efficacy amongst preschoolers: Some methodological variations on themes from Bandura’s theory

Abstract

This paper has a multidimensional and interdisciplinary focus, which aims to integrate insights from preschool studies, philosophy and methodology. The basic research question is: How is it possible to conduct research into preschoolers’ perceived selfefficacy, in line with Bandura’s theory, and what are its methodological implications for self-efficacy studies in general? The nuts and bolts of Bandura’s theory are first explained: in particular how it distinguishes itself from self-esteem theories, and how its object is basically what in everyday parlance is called “self-confidence”, although Bandura decided to coin the neologism “perceived self-efficacy” to capture its essence better and to avoid conflation with selfesteem. According to this theory, the self-efficacy of a person (P) vis-à-vis a task (T) – a student’s self-efficacy with respect to a given assignment, for instance – substantially influences the course of action P chooses to pursue, how much effort P puts forth, how long P perseveres in the face of obstacles and failures, the levels of stress P experiences in coping with T and, ultimately, the likelihood of P’s accomplishing T. Bandura argues that self-efficacy is cultivated through (a) enactive mastery experiences, (b) vicarious experiences provided by relevant role models, (c) verbal persuasion and allied types of social influences and (d) intermittent or stable physiological and affective states. This theory falls into the category of so-called anti-realist self-theories (which equate selfhood with self-concept) and its best understood as a variety of psychological attributionism, according to which people tend to act in accordance with the explanations they like to give for their own behaviour and with the attributes they believe they possess, whether or not they actually possess them. Perceived self-efficacy is typically measured by dint of self-reports where people are asked to grade their own self-efficacy in a given domain. Such measures are obviously not applicable to preschoolers due to their less advanced level of linguistic competency. The paper explores some methodological avenues to overcome this shortcoming and concludes that the method of “pedagogical documentation” may hold a key to its solution. A core section in the paper exemplifies the use of such a method to decipher self-efficacy (or lack thereof) in preschoolers, by applying it to an analysis of data from the first author’s current doctoral study of life and work in a single preschool over a single school year. The analysis seems to indicate that reading self-efficacy (or lack thereof) out of the data is feasible, although no further attempt is made here to operationalise it for use in traditional correlational research à la Bandura (on presumed connections between perceived self-efficacy and various other psychological and social variables). The article then takes a meta-methodological turn. By using insights from a classic work by Nisbett and Ross on human beings’ affective ignorance and lack of selftransparency – and hence the inadequacies of self-report measurements – the conclusion is reached that traditional measures of perceived self-efficacy do not necessarily capture people’s actual perceived self-efficacy but rather their beliefs about what that perceived self-efficacy is likely to be when it comes to the crunch of actually being faced with a relevant task. The earlier discussion about the possibility of developing a pedagogic-documentation-inspired measure of preschoolers’ self-efficacy may thus have wider implications than earlier anticipated for self-efficacy research in general. More specifically, if it is advisable, as Nisbett and Ross maintain, to try to find more objective measures even of subjective variables (such as self-efficacy) than typical selfreport instruments, then an objective method based on pedagogical documentation may pave the way to more accurate studies of self-efficacy in general – not only children’s self-efficacy – and hence enhance the methodological viability and conceptual reliability of Bandura’s theory.