Fostering Self-Efficacy Among Adolescents in Secondary General Music

Musical Hesitancies

Feelings of vulnerability can result in hesitant students with low self-efficacy for musical participation. To fully participate in musical ways, students must overcome such hesitancies so that they may take risks with and among peers, including singing, moving, playing, and creating music in varied ways. As music is necessarily an auditory art form, students realize that risk-taking will be visible, that is, heard by others.

Music requires that students take risks in ways that other subjects may not. SGM may contrast other, general educational experiences that allow students to act in passive ways. Although traditional ensemble-type music classes may require active participation, they also may not. In all music classes, students should build skills, develop contextual understandings, and encounter continuous opportunities to enact their own musicianship in creative ways. Students who are accustomed to their student role as a passive learner may act disinterested in SGM, whether or not the disinterest is real or used as a safety measure related to risk-taking and negative self-efficacy. SGM teachers who expect students to sing, move, play, and create could be asking a lot of them relative to other educational experiences.

Singing, playing, moving, and creating are essential components of a meaningful musical experience (Elliott, 1995), as they allow students to “do” music, build musical skills, and create context for conceptual understandings of music. SGM classes such as music history, music appreciation, and music theory are also important and—although this is not always the case—are best realized in settings when active music making accompanies leaning about music and analysis of it, providing a foundation and context for building skills and understandings. For instance, while teaching principles of voice leading with four-part harmonies in a music theory class, students can listen to and analyze examples, play samples on keyboards, sing them in four parts in large and small groups, compose their own examples, analyze their work, workshop solutions to potential issues or challenges, and sing and play them in various configurations. These activities can be done in musical ways, involving movement and expression. Such activities should also allow for historical context, connections to modern repertoire, and creative arrangements. These activities can tie into warmups or elaborated projects, allowing for improvisatory singing, playing, and movement.

Participatory music making however, can create anxiety. For students to wholeheartedly engage in and build such skills, understandings, and abilities, self-efficacy must be present. One’s self-efficacy sets the stage for adaptation and persistence (Klinedinst, 1991), important characteristics for learning in SGM and for lifelong musical pursuits. According to Pajares (2003), self-efficacy is foundational toward one’s overall motivation and well-being. Pajares (2005) stated, “Unless young people believe that their actions can produce the results they desire, they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of the difficulties that inevitably ensue” (p. 339). Although learning strategies are often discussed among teachers (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 2012), students must also be motivated to implement them and to find strategies that are personally effective.

Teachers can direct students to complete tasks that they would not otherwise choose to engage in (resulting in what may be half-hearted participation), but once they are outside of school settings students will likely discontinue those tasks they perceive to be beyond their abilities. If SGM teachers hope that their students will engage in lifelong music pursuits, then self-efficacy should be at the heart of their goals for student learning, as it leads to both short-term goals (e.g., learning to accompany oneself on guitar) and long-term goals (e.g., feeling like a musical person, choosing to do musical things).

These goals must be appropriate for the learner—not unachievable but not too easy. Students should be encouraged to self-evaluate without become self-judging and to distinguish between both. Self-reactions must be considered behaviorally, environmentally, and personally (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 2012). For example, students with performance anxiety might video record their own mock performance to begin seeing themselves in a performing role (behavioral); perform in small venues such as the classroom, for a safe group such as classmates or friends (environmental); and practice relaxation techniques in order to calm performance anxiety (personal).

Sources of Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy comprises self-knowledge and feelings about oneself, including one’s ability to learn new things (Bandura, 1997). According to Zelenak (2015), Bandura described self-efficacy as “a self-referent thought through which individuals assessed their skills and abilities to accomplish specific tasks” (p. 391). What contributes to this self-knowledge? According to Bandura (1997), four sources of life experience are implicated (and integrated) in one’s self-efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional and psychological states (see Figure 1). Although these categories intersect and overlap, each has unique implications for SGM teachers who hope to build learners’ self-efficacy.

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Figure 1.

Approaches toward self-efficacy in secondary general music classrooms.

Mastery Experiences

Mastery experiences are particularly effective among these four sources of self-knowledge (Bandura, 1997; Hendricks, 2016; Zelenak, 2015). They are composed of one’s prior successes or perceived successes. Students who accumulate mastery experiences build self-efficacy. In other words, they can reflect back positively, “I’ve been successful before,” as they look forward with optimism, “I can do it again.” Similarly, negative experiences will negatively affect one’s self-efficacy. According to Özmenteş (2014), mastery experiences may even be related to one’s self-esteem. While these points may seem obvious, music teachers may not be aware of what moments of music success their students had in the past and why students regarded them as successful. Knowledge of students’ prior mastery experiences in music can help teachers and students identify meaningful learning goals for SGM.

Importantly, students’ successes must be genuine, or as Pajares (2005) terms them, “actual success” (p. 344) that are regarded by students as authentic and earned through prolonged effort. In SGM, students should be first involved in active music making. A SGM course designed as a squarely academic pursuit will fail to provide students with musical skills and experiences necessary to have, as Pajares states, actual musical success and contextualized musical understandings. Similarly, the types of exercises and activities used to build skills can be helpful and enhance student learning, yet may not feel satisfying or authentic. When students complete projects, including creative musical endeavors, music teachers can foster the feeling of a milestone moment through summative assessments, opportunities to present and share outcomes, and reflection on their growth. When students learn to sing and accompany themselves playing a song; composing, performing; creating an arrangement that they then organize a peer group to record; and so on, their learning experience has come full circle and will likely feel like an achievement.

Differentiated learning opportunities must be present (Kvet & Watkins, 1993) for students to find their own sweet spot for learning: enough challenge to interest the learner, and an acknowledgement of one’s prior, related abilities that lead toward a belief in their likelihood to further achieve. For example, singing and accompanying oneself on a three-chord song may be a challenge for a beginning guitarist, while more advanced students will require significantly more demanding tasks to feel they have achieved authentic musical growth. Striking the right balance is an ongoing consideration, as all growing students require that challenges are incrementally and continually increased (McPherson & McCormick, 2006).

Differentiated learning should exist in a classroom of any sort, yet musical études (i.e., activities, exercises, warmups, skill-building) should be balanced with the types of outcomes that allow for self-directed learning, ownership of the task, and individual or collective direction, therefore meaning and motivation. In music classes, these benchmarks may be regarded unquestioningly as performance opportunities, yet musical projects that provide what students may regard as authentic learning can take on many other forms as well (e.g., recordings and other media, arrangements, compositions, musical events, interdisciplinary projects).

Short-term goals that are achievable and sequenced in progression, along with opportunities to reflect on growth and successes, will enable students to build self-efficacy. Hendricks (2016) notes that demanding or long-term accomplishments will do more to bolster an individual’s sense of success than those that are less difficult, yet students may quit when they perceive the task as too challenging (Gerrity, 2009), or feel they lack competence to succeed (Covington, 1985). One end-of-semester performance is insufficient to build self-efficacy. Smaller achievements, also referred to as proximal attainments (Hendricks, 2016), can provide necessary motivation and build feelings of mastery toward a continued learning progression.

Vicarious Experiences

It is inevitable that adolescent students measure their own music-making abilities by comparing themselves to their peers. Despite what may be an inclusive, community atmosphere in SGM, students will compare themselves to others. This is particularly so during adolescence, when, as Erikson (1950) indicates in his psychosocial stages of development, youth face a crisis of identity. At this time, students tend to focus their attention on social dynamics, relationships, and themselves as an individual in relationship to others in their world. In order to grapple with these concerns, students look to peers as a point of comparison.

Bandura (1997) describes peer modeling as potentially positive or negative. When students see that a peer they deem comparable to themselves has success in a mastery experience of their own, the vicarious experience can positively contribute to their self-efficacy. For example, “We’re a lot alike, we sing together and can basically do the same things—if she can get up in front of the class and sing alone, I bet I can, too.” Whereas, if the individual perceives the peer as incomparable, “Of course she can get up there and sing—she’s taken voice lessons forever and she’s really good,” the vicarious experience can affect self-efficacy negatively, “No way I’m even trying.”

It is important that teachers bear in mind these perceptions when asking students to perform for one another, share projects, to provide peer modeling, or peer assessment. Developing projects for instance, might be as important to share as performances deemed concert-ready, which encourages students to focus on learning and growth rather than a final outcome. Students can be asked to develop individual learning goals, reflect on their processes, and create standards for evaluating their own outcomes (Pajares, 2003; Zimmerman, 2000) in order to build ownership throughout the learning process. Although Hewitt (2015) indicates that the more advanced students become, the harder they tend to rate themselves, self-evaluation can nevertheless be useful so that students might be discouraged from an abundance of social comparison, while given power to own their personal goals and growth.

It is important for music teachers to model musicianship on a variety of instruments, including those on which they may be inexperienced, and to make this point known in moments of mutual vulnerability. If students are required to participate and make themselves vulnerable among peers, music teachers can kindly demonstrate that this is acceptable growth-minded practice for anyone (i.e., themselves included). As Pajares (2003) recommends, rather than practice a model of pure mastery, that is, demonstrating a kind of infallibility tied up in authority and subordination; teachers will do well to enact a coping model. As a coping model, teachers admit errors, “That chord wasn’t right there, was it?” and illustrate to students that mistakes can be acknowledged and overcome, that risk-taking is desirable, and that music growth requires that they are willing to trust one another, so that all can make, embrace, and learn from mistakes.

Music teachers who empower students to take ownership of their learning and musicianship build self-efficacy (Hendricks, 2016). When providing students with feedback, teachers must take care to allow students ownership, therefore offering what Pajares (2003) terms instrumental, rather than executive help. Executive help gives an answer or provides a solution, thus taking over, directing, and decreasing students’ self-efficacy. While most teachers would agree executive help is not typically desirable for encouraging self-directed learning, it nevertheless occurs. When students compose it can be tempting to offer solutions or enhancements. Music teachers may become invested in the developing product and take over: “If you change that chord, your harmonic progression will work better,” or “It would be great if you added a descant the second time through.”

Instrumental help, however, provides the student only enough information so that they can reclaim their own process. It should serve to propel students forward in their own ways. This can often come in the form of questions that enable students to articulate their thinking, their goals, and their own questions. Instrumental help can, as Pajares (2005) explains, “foster problem-solving, authentic mastery, and self-reliance” (p. 358). For example, “Explain what you were trying to accomplish in the B section,” “How did you come to the decision to add in this percussion part?”, or very simply, “Tell me about your piece.” Opportunities to articulate their thinking in these open-ended ways may allow students to come to their own, pointed questions, and likely their own solutions. Although it will be helpful to offer students specific feedback at some points, they are best served by this feedback after they have articulated their own thinking and had opportunities to revise their project in their own ways.

Verbal Persuasion

The ways teachers give feedback are important—the things they say and the ways they say them have implications for students’ self-efficacy. Verbal persuasion can take the form of actual words. The words teachers use to communicate to students may even become the words students reiterate to themselves. Verbal persuasion also includes societal messaging. While teachers represent one kind of role model, societal messages, too can also shape students’ belief systems as they compare themselves to elements of music in society. Societal messages about music, musical people, and musicianship can include imagery (music videos, style associated with particular genres or groups), people (celebrity musicians, songwriters, performing groups), meanings (music that confronts current social and political issues), movement (dance, musical embodiment), and music in media (movie soundtracks, television theme songs, music in advertising, online musical content). These models are often well–known, if not valued deeply, but may be unattainable in the SGM course.

In terms of teachers’ words, praise, for example, is important but only when given honestly and for deserved efforts. Without honest praise, teachers’ words lose credibility. Praise, when it is given, should be personal, meaningful, and specific to the individual’s work and learning goals. Involvement and interest, however, should be given freely. Music teachers who comment that they have noticed hard work, perseverance, motivation, and growing understandings and skills should make that known to students. Likewise, when interested in a student’s work, teachers should ask questions, listen intently, and facilitate collaborative connections related to their learning.

Societal messages about musicianship are powerful. Who do students see making music? Often, they encounter music and musicianship that is well practiced, at an advanced skill level, and sometimes highly produced. Students may regard music as a perfected product to consume rather than an activity at which one works hard and enjoys with others. Much societal emphasis on musicianship tends to be placed on talent, a vague term implying special, innate abilities that can promote the understanding that some people are musical but many are not. If SGM exists on the margins of a school music program that may emphasize performance, sometimes with competing large ensembles, the message of talent may be all the more powerful for them, contributing to what may be negative self-efficacy.

Where are the amateur musicians of the community? And who among them would be interested to share their musicianship? One will likely find parents, colleagues, administrators, and others, who make music in some way for their own enjoyment, or who would be interested to take part with students. These individuals should be welcomed into the SGM class, encouraged to share their musicianship, and provide role modeling for lifelong musical pursuits in a variety of ways. Faculty steel drum bands, parent-student choirs, and the like can successfully contribute to images of musicianship at many levels and in many ways, as well as provide community spaces for shared music making.

If students fail to encounter amateur musicianship, and are guarded against images of practice struggles and artistic decision making, they may be persuaded to believe they are not musical and that music is not for them. For those comparing themselves to high-achieving peers in a large ensemble or private lessons, negative self-efficacy may be all the more present. Music teachers should carefully craft their words toward what Dweck (2000) refers to as a growth mind-set: “Look how far you have come!,” “I see how hard you have worked on this phrase,” or “Let’s talk about the ways you have improved this section,” and other comments that emphasize hard work, sustained effort, and growth over time. Unfortunately, music teachers may adopt a fixed mind-set, where emphasis is given to one’s supposed preexisting ability, “You are very talented,” “You are smart!”, “You sounded great!”, or even “You’ve got a beautiful voice!”, which reinforce the already powerful societal message that some people are musical and others are not.

Emotional and Psychological States

A student’s emotional and psychological state has to do with the quality of the activity, and the degree to which it stimulates the learner (Zelenak, 2015). Students’ feelings are important. Feelings about themselves, their capabilities, and their place among classmates and school community set the tone for the acceptance, assuredness, and motivation necessary to learn. Acknowledgment of students’ feelings can be time well spent. Efforts to build a sense of community can contribute to a productive learning environment. Many teachers feel that they have little time to consider these factors, yet without doing so, learning time can be derailed in significant ways. Similarly, time spent challenging taken-for-granted societal messaging and images of music making can also be time well spent. These discussions can help students make sense of what they see and understand, as well as who they are in relation to a larger music-making community.

Students who “check out” and communicate a lack of interest or enthusiasm may in fact be employing a safety mechanism. If you never really try, failing may not hurt as much. Of course, failing to try can hurt more in the end. This includes self-deception. Self-deception is described by Chance and Norton (2015) as “a motivated and conscious false belief held simultaneously with a conflicting unconscious true belief” (p. 104). One common way that self-deception can manifest is in procrastination. While a student may consider themselves a hard worker, or action-oriented person, the act of procrastinating can conceal the student’s nonaction (e.g., failing to practice or to complete a project), allowing them to continue to regard themselves as action-oriented. When procrastinating, however, the student neither enacts their agency, nor takes responsibility for their learning. Procrastination pulls the student from intention toward a failed will to act. Many moments of hesitation can lead to lengthy procrastination.

This kind of self-deception must be pointed out in ways that lead to productive discussion, and an active valuing of students’ own developing ideas and feelings. For instance, music teachers can not only set class goals but also invite students to contribute to a long-term vision for their own music growth. As well, students should set benchmarks toward these goals and create smaller tasks along the way. In essence, adolescents can participate in some backward curricular planning of their own. If given a project and a period of time, students should be guided by clear tasks, regular check-ins, available peer and instructor feedback, and small moments of celebration. In other words, rather than putting all pressure on a final performance, SGM students can share their musical products throughout their processes (e.g., workshopping a song with peers, seeking feedback on a recorded version of an arrangement, performing compositions for a small segment of the school or local community). These experiences can motivate students and contribute to a collective momentum for learning music.

Zimmerman and Ringle (1981) found that elementary students persisted in difficult problems when presented with an optimistic model. Teachers can foster such optimism in part through encouragement and modeling. For example, when facing a potentially difficult task, such as writing an original song, music teachers should first foster a feeling of community among peers. They can also workshop strategies for addressing many components of the process as a whole class, like using a predetermined component (e.g., lyrics, chord progression, melodic contour), adapting that predetermined component, or creating an original. Through whole-class, followed by small-group workshopping, students walk through the process together and then have a pathway by which they might begin (i.e., their tool box of strategies and possibilities). As a small group, peers can provide perspectives, brainstorming, and a negotiation of ideas among fewer individuals, who are guided by prior whole-class modeling. The more opportunities students have to think and act creatively with music, the likelier they will be to have their own strategies when facing a musical challenge.

Music teachers should model optimism. It is important that the SGM teacher will work alongside students, creating their own projects and making their process known, inviting students to offer feedback to them, and asking questions of the students that allow them to analyze, evaluate, and assess. When students feel stuck or frustrated, it important to encourage their continued strategizing: “You can figure this out. What have you tried already?”, “Try to describe how you hope it will sound,” or “Let’s check out a few examples and see if you can figure out what others have done.”