Date

Spring 2024

Document Type

Master's Thesis (Open Access)

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Teacher Education

Abstract

If students perceive themselves as successful readers and communicators, then their self-efficacy in the academic arena will shift, increasing motivation and achievement in turn. Interventions established to support self-efficacy among at-risk students may improve their chances of secondary completion and this will have a positive impact not only for students currently in our schools, but also for their future success and the success of our wider communities. This quantitative two group study was designed to examine whether individual goal setting when paired with self assessment could positively impact at-risk secondary -efficacy in ELA for grade 10. Self-efficacy was measured using The Student Self-Efficacy Scale as a pre and post test. The treatment group was introduced to goal setting and self assessment as a mini unit with three days of training lessons followed by four weeks where students set a weekly academic SMART goal and assessed their progress using a self assessment rubric. The results of this study support the hypothesis. Findings herein show that individual goal setting combined with self assessment did positively impact the self-efficacy of at-risk 10th grade ELA students in a statistically significant way. Students identified as at-risk in the treatment group significantly increased their mean scores on the SSE scale, while at-risk students in the control group showed no significant change.

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