Constructs of efficacy in gifted young women. (The scholarship of teaching and learning).

Abstract

This qualitative study examined perceptions of self-efficacy of gifted young women in three distinct learning environments -- a public high school, a private school, and an early entrance to university program. The goal was to discover the ways that learning environments influenced efficacy beliefs. Findings indicated that perception of efficacy is a result of the interactions of the learner, her behavior in a particular learning environment, and factors present in the learning environment. Thematic constructs that respond to and influence efficacy beliefs in the young women are presented. The implications for both researchers and educators are explored.

Introduction

Research demonstrates that perceptions of efficacy affect learning and achievement (Bandura, 1995; Locke, Frederick, Lee, & Bobko, 1984; Pajares & Miller, 1994; Schack, 1989, Zimmerman, 1995). Students with strong self-efficacy set higher goals, develop self-regulated learning strategies, and demonstrate higher achievement. This inquiry probed the efficacy perceptions of gifted young women and the effects of their learning environments on those perceptions.

Review of Literature

Gifted Females

Salient among essential factors in developing the potential of gifted girls are the education of parents regarding the cognitive and affective needs of their daughters, early identification, opportunity to interact with like peers, counseling, mentor opportunities, and special conferences for gifted girls (Callahan, Cunningham & Plucker, 1991; Noble, 1989; Reis, Callahan & Goldsmith, 1994; Silverman, 1991). If giftedness is understood as the potential to perform at exceptionally high levels in areas of strength, then gifted young women today are descendents of generations of underachievers. For example, Schuster (1990) concluded in her study of four birth cohorts that many gifted women remained ambivalent toward career commitment and doubted their worth in the career arena. Positive results in her study suggest the latest cohort in the study (1940's) has benefited from what appears to be "a changing social and economic climate for women" (p. 476). Conversely, Walker and Mehr (1992) interviewed several cohorts (1910-1980's) of graduates of The Hunter School, a school whose major mission was to provide an environment where capable girls can learn and achieve their potential. In spite of the learning environment, the majority of the women stated that they had failed to realize their potential.

Educators need to understand why so many of our gifted women fail to excel. Garrison (1993) determined that a fundamental issue is that the gifted female is still at risk of not being identified and/or not receiving services in gifted programs. Furthermore, Reis and Callahan (1996) reported a tendency for gifted girls to drop out of participation in gifted programs as they progress through the grades.

Beyond identification a multitude of factors become determinants of success or underachievement of gifted girls. A study of societal and emotional balance in gifted girls, grades one through twelve, found that self-perception of ability and self-confidence decline throughout schooling, with girls disguising their abilities and feelings (Kline & Short, 1991). Feldhusen and Willard-Holt (1996) found that gifted boys are more aware of gender differences in the classroom than their female peers. The boys noticed that teachers gave them more frequent attention than gifted girls, and that boys were the focus of the teachers' lessons. The authors surmised that this finding "may be another indication of the differential treatment to which girls have become accustomed" (p. 39). The literature verifies the clear need to examine the environments in which gifted girls study, and to determine which factors in the learning environment promote the gifted female's realization of her academic and socioemotional potentials.

Perceptions of Efficacy

Bandura's Social Cognitive Learning theory is a paradigm that describes the process of reciprocal interactions among the individual's cognitive and personal factors, individual behavior, and the human environment (Bandura, 1986, 1995). The individual brings to a learning activity cognitive attributes such as symbolizing, forethought, self-reflective, and self-regulatory capabilities. Central to self-referent capabilities is the construct of self-efficacy. This perception is an important mediating factor in our learning process and concomitant behavior. Bandura (1986) defined self-efficacy as "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances" (p. 391). This belief influences cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components of psychological functioning. Attributes of efficacious behavior include coping behaviors, stress reactions, reactions to failure experiences, achievement motivation, interest motivation, goal setting, and career choices (Bandura, 1982). These are behaviors that are of particular interest in the study of gifted females and which appear often in the literature regarding this learner (Callahan, Cunningham & Plucker, 1991; Leroux, 1994; Reis & Callahan, 1996).

Self-efficacy appeared as a strong predictor of performance accomplishments in a number of studies (Pajares & Miller, 1994; Mone, 1994; Williams, 1994). In a study of gifted students, Schack's (1989) research demonstrates that self-perceptions of capability positively influence successful performance in an enriched environment, and successful accomplishments in an enriched environment positively influenced self-perceptions of efficacy. Similarly, Shucard and Hillman (1990) studied forty gifted girls and forty gifted boys in grades six through eight. Their findings determined that a successful result with a task was a critical factor in determining efficacy, satisfaction and reward. Navan (1993) reported that gifted high school females who participated in a collaborative conference for creative young writers experienced a higher perception of self-efficacy as writer and set higher proximal writing goals subsequent to the conference.

Regarding the prediction of self-efficacy, Rodenstein and Glickauf-Hughes (1977), in a study of 201 gifted women, underscored the need for assisting personal growth and developing autonomy as important factors in career and lifestyle integration. Furthermore, they emphasized the importance of understanding how different educational contexts affect the self-perceptions of gifted females. The quest for this understanding motivated the study reported herein.

Participants

Within each environment there exists a wide range of curriculum models, teaching strategies, and learning activities. The present study was not intended to encompass all of the options; rather, to offer a portrait of gifted young women in three distinct learning environments. Each setting is not meant to be representative, nor are the findings meant to be easily generalized to other settings. However, researchers can extend the conclusions and implications to enrich the learning of the gifted females.

The participants in the study were twenty gifted females in Grades 11 or 12, studying in co-educational settings in the northeastern United States. Eight studied in a public high school, four in a small private school affiliated with the Coalition for Essential Schools, and eight in an early college entrance program. In the early entrance program, students were simultaneously completing high school and their first year of college. The three environments were chosen as representative of the settings in most gifted young women study and to assess which factors in these common settings affect efficacy perceptions.

The common thread in the selection of the participants was their giftedness, with all students previously identified. The students in the public high school were members of a gifted program and received enrichment once a week in a gifted resource room. The rest of their academic week was spent in heterogeneously grouped classrooms, with the exception of their upper level math and science classes, which were composed of above average ability students. The private school was associated with the Coalition for Essential Schools network and its curriculum was a well-articulated, interdisciplinary course of study. The focus of learning activities was the acquisition of metacognitive thinking skills. Content was presented in an integrated manner, with students demonstrating achievement through a variety of performance and artistic products. Each Wednesday afternoon students pursued independent inquiry with a mentor, and two hours per week they performed community service.

In the early college entrance program, high school students completed a full year of college-level studies in classes with other matriculated college students. Early entrance students lived together in a dormitory adjacent to the program offices, receiving support services from dormitory and other staff members with training in the needs of gifted adolescents. Like the private school cohort, these students took advantage of opportunities to work with a professor or mentor as a practicing professional in research or other enriched programs.

Method

Each environment was examined independently throughout the study, with a final cross-site analysis. The researcher met with each group of students in their educational environment for a focus group interview. The focus groups were taped, transcribed, and analyzed qualitatively, using a computer program (FOLIO Views) that allowed the researcher to highlight and group data that responded to research questions that sought to discover 1) in what ways gifted young women perceived themselves as academically efficacious, and 2) what factors in their learning settings influenced their feelings of efficacy. Qualitative groupings of data were tagged as categories and a preliminary analysis narrative was composed.

Subsequent to the analysis of the focus group data, the researcher observed students in each of the environments, collecting data that indicated the reciprocal dynamics of cognitive perceptions, behavior, and the environment. Findings from the first focus group and the observations were shared with the students prior to the second focus group. Thus they were able to affirm and to refine the researcher's initial analysis. Additionally, participants completed individual reflections, and researcher interviews with the directors of the programs provided triangulation data. Each site composed a fundamental unit for analytical purposes. After computer-assisted reading, highlight and grouping of all data, themes emerged that provided the beginnings of the hermeneutic interpretation of the student's perceptions and lived experiences. The qualitative design of the study entailed emerging analysis of data, allowing a richness of voices and data to emanate, and confirming women's cognitive need to connect and learn through relationships (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan, 1982).

Results

Perceptions of Efficacy

Results indicated that gifted young women have differing perceptions of academic efficacy in distinct learning environments. All reported strong academic efficacy, yet students in the public high school perceived themselves strongest in subject matter efficacy, a narrow dimension which limited their access to integrated, connected knowledge beyond the classroom and to the growth of personal agency. Gifted young women in the private high school demonstrated metacognitive efficacy. In the integrated and inquiry focused environment of a Coalition school, belief in metacognitive abilities allowed them access to connected and dynamic knowledge and nurtured their incipient self-agency. Gifted female students in the early entrance program, as emerging adults in a challenging university environment, revealed strong global self-efficacy as well as a clearly emerging self-agency. These young women demonstrated the strongest resilience and set the highest career goals for themselves. One student at this site stated, "Of six living generations in my family, I am from only the second generation to read and write. And I can do anything that I put my heart into."

Thematic Constructs

Theme is an attempt to give focus and meaning to the encountered phenomenon through a process of insightful examination, discovery, and disclosure (van Manen, 1990). In the course of the study, certain thematic constructs appeared throughout the learning environments, revealing a phenomenological complexity in which all constructs interact and influence one another in both mediating and moderating fashions (See Figure 1). See <http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/spri02.htm>

Versatility and practicing professional. Versatility manifested itself in various ways. In the public school, students presented themselves as not merely academic students; rather they spoke of involvement in athletics and extra-curricular activities. Along with work experiences, they developed life skills that enriched their repertoire of abilities. In the early entrance academy and at the private school, students had the opportunity to work as practicing professionals. This involved authentic experiences in the field working with mentors who were experts in the field, which gave them a sense of versatility as a practicing professional.

Autonomous learner. Miller (1986) described autonomy as becoming a "separate and self-directed individual" (p. 95). Facets of the construct emerged in the young women in this study as they spoke of their need to feel autonomous, often at the same time that they emphasized their need for close relationships with others. Their ability to function effectively in their environments depended on their ability and their freedom to continually perform a dance of approach and distance. The students in the study were aware of their developing vision of self and their need to personally create an autonomous self in relation with the world.

Emerging self-agency. Assertiveness, instrumentality and interpersonal facility characterize the psychological construct of agency (Solberg, Good, Fischer, Brown & Nord, 1995). The individual who demonstrates capable human agency is self-protective, self-assertive and self-efficacious (Hawkins, 1982). The gifted female in the early entrance academy had an incipient self-agency

that reinforced her feelings of efficacy. She spoke of asserting herself and her needs to come to the bridging year school, often without support or understanding on the part of family members, friends, or school personnel. She demonstrated her personal instrumentality in her high quality of participation in classes and other activities at the university. This emergent self-agency joins self-efficacy, and predictably will become the core around which the other constructs are clustered. In the other two environments, the construct of self-agency is not as apparent. While students in these two settings related their agential abilities as learners, they did not speak of themselves as agents that affected and had the potential to affect the more extensive community environment.

Connectedness. The early entrance student celebrates being female and believes her emotions affirm her humanity and give her the greatest sense of efficacy when she uses her feeling to relate to others. One student said,

   "I don't think that women should feel like any of their qualities are
   weaknesses. Emotions are what make us, instead of being only the scientist
   or only the technician, they're what make us human beings."

In the private school, gifted young women related their need for connectedness to their metacognitive processes. When one spoke of her perceptions as grounded in her interactions with others, and her learning and behavior being forms of those interactions, all of the students agreed eagerly. Public school students spoke of certain teachers who took a special interest in the students. In all of the environments, the female gifted students learned best in interactional and interpersonal ways.

Resilience. In all environments students demonstrated resilience. Bridging year students spoke of past coping with difficult school and home environments. Private school students showed resilience in choosing to leave public schools that were detrimental to their individual growth. In the public school, students displayed incipient resilience in their refusal to feel less capable and less efficacious in the face of male peers and teachers who ignored their abilities and needs.

Femaleness. Woman becomes self through creativity and authenticity (Miller, 1986). Young women in the study achieved the awareness of self as autonomous learner and it was through that strength that they were able to choose self in relation to others. They found their femaleness in relationships and found the strength to grow in autonomy by withdrawing and defining themselves and their relationships to self and to others.

Ethical Grounding. Each of the twenty young women indirectly expressed a sensitivity that was manifested in ethical grounding. They suggested their sense of awe of life and their potential, of the connectedness they felt to humanity, and of their commitment to make a significant contribution to society. They all reiterated throughout the study their desire that this research benefit other gifted young women.

Collaboration. Public school students perceived themselves as most efficacious in mathematics, and it was precisely in that class that I observed a collaborative style of teaching and learning. During the class the instructor nurtured collaboration and included herself as a cooperative problem solver. Bridging year environment students spoke at length of the warm and supportive family environment created by the academy's staff. The private school was designed in such a way that all students saw themselves as valuable participants in a community of learners. The collaborative spirit of these examples was a major factor influencing their perceptions of efficacy and their self-agency.

Like Peers. In each of the schools the need to study with students who were of similar abilities and motivation was voiced. In heterogeneous public school classrooms, student spoke of their difficulty with teachers who declined to carry through with challenging objectives when less motivated students ignored or failed to meet expectations. Gifted females in the other two environments described the benefit to their growth that grew out of studying with capable, task-committed and motivated students. They spoke of how being in environments such as these reinforced their own perceptions of their abilities.

Discussion and Implications

The findings confirmed the importance of cognitive and personal influences on behavior and vice versa, and emphasized the importance of learning environments in the formation of self-perceptions. Different learning environments resulted in different efficacy perceptions - subject matter efficacy, metacognitive efficacy, and self-agency as a learner. Implications of the study indicate that students who are dependent on subject matter efficacy were not able to process metacognitively to the same degree as students in the other two environments. Thus, the study implies a need to promote metacognitive growth in an environment that challenges and supports student learning. Educational environments that are challenging, supportive, and collaborative respond to the psychosocial needs of the gifted female, allowing her to discover self in voice and through relationships, thus promoting the development of agency.

The research indicates the importance of providing teachers with a thorough overview of the psychosocial development of females and of gifted females in particular. The twenty young women who participated in this study appeared poised and ready to begin adulthood. However, the students in the public school reflected many of the risks of underachievement that were discussed in the literature. There is a need to prepare teachers with the appropriate educational psychology background that allows them to understand female cognitive development, and to design curricula and learning activities that provide for continuous progress. The study illustrated that educational environments affect students' perceptions of efficacy. Believing that knowledge is received rather than constructed, the gifted female may not develop a sense of self as agent in the world. By empowering students both metacognitively and collaboratively, educators will improve the likelihood that students will develop strong academic efficacy. Gifted students - and gifted females in particular - respond to environments in which they have the opportunity to work with challenging material and with peers of similar interests and abilities.

Inclusive classrooms that celebrate everyone's special attributes will instill in all students a sense of worth and agency. Opportunities to work as a practicing professional with mentors and role models is a means of developing efficacy beyond the classroom. Creating collaborative, challenging educational settings that respond to the special needs of gifted females, educators allow for the rich development of constructs of efficacy.

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Joy L. Navan, Murray State University, KY

Dr. Navan's involvement with gifted education spans the last two decades, during which she has been a gifted resource teacher, the director of residential programs for the gifted, and a researcher. She is presently Director of the Center for Gifted Studies in the College of Education.