Instructional strategies for building African-American males' self-efficacy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if The Efficacy Curriculum would increase self-efficacy in African American male high school students exposed to the curriculum in technology education classes. African American males are a group whose academic achievement has lagged behind that of other groups. The design of the study was a pre-experiment study of difference. The Student Self-Efficacy Instrument was administered to the students at the beginning of their ninth grade school year to determine their self-efficacy level. The Efficacy Curriculum was delivered as a curricular theme for the technology education content for a period of a semester and then the instrument was re-administered to determine the students' level of self-efficacy after the instruction. The study found that the students' levels of self-efficacy did increase as a result of the use of the Efficacy Curriculum. The curriculum was also postulated to change the students' conceptualization of self-efficacy and also to increase the students' levels of another variable, academic responsibility, to an even greater extent than found with the self-efficacy variable. The self-efficacy variable has been shown in the past to be a strong determinating factor in higher academic achievement in students whose self-efficacy was determined to be at high levels.