Week 12 - Efficacy

Student and teacher efficacy is a term that I didn't really understand before watching Professor Cathy Bruce's video. While watching this video I found that it is greatly linked with the growth mindset that we talked about earlier in the year. Students and teachers with a growth mindset would have high student and teacher efficacy and would be more willing to take on new tasks without the fear of failure. On the opposite side, students and teachers with a fixed mindset would have low student and teacher efficacy.

As the video said, teachers with high efficacy are more willing to try new activities with their students and will also try harder to help their students learn because they have higher success standards for themselves as well as their students. I believe that having high teacher efficacy is essential in modern classrooms. Students will raise their own learning standards if their teacher's standards for them are raised, compared to when their teacher's standards for them are lower. When there is high teacher efficacy in the classroom there is a better chance that students with low efficacy can raise their efficacy levels and improve their learning habits. Similarly to teachers with growth mindsets being able to change their students' fixed mindsets to growth mindsets. Trying different methods and different tools to teach math concepts will help reach more of the students' learning abilities. Teachers with high efficacy would be more willing to use these differentiated learning techniques, which would help them to have a higher student success level.

I hope that when I become a teacher I would have a growth mindset and a high enough teacher efficacy level to help my students improve their student efficacy levels and to not only learn what is being taught, but understand it as well.