Participation in Goal Setting: Effects on Self-Efficacy and Skills of Learning-Disabled Children By: Dale H. Schunk, PhD Schunk, D. H. (1985). Participation in goal setting: Effects on self-efficacy and skills of learning disabled

This experiment tested the hypothesis that participation in goal setting enhances self-efficacy and skills. Subjects were sixth-grade children who previously had been classified as learning disabled in mathematics. Children received subtraction training that included instruction and practice opportunities over several sessions. Some children set proximal performance goals each session, others had comparable proximal goals assigned, and children in a third condition received the training but no goals. Although proximal goals promoted motivation more than no goals, participation in goal setting led to the highest self-efficacy and subtraction skill. Implications for teaching are discussed. Article: According to Bandura (1977a, 1981, 1982), different psychological procedures change behavior in part by creating and strengthening a sense of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy means personal judgment of one's performance capabilities in specific situations that may contain ambiguous, unpredictable, and stressful features. Selfefficacy is hypothesized to influence choice of activities, effort expenditure, perseverance, and task accomplishments. Although self-efficacy originally was employed to help explain coping behaviors in fearful situations, its role has been extended to other contexts, including children's cognitive skill acquisition (Schunk, 1981, 1983a, 1983b). The latter research has shown that educational practices are important contextual influences on selfefficacy and differ in the type of efficacy information they convey (Schunk, 1984). In turn, self-efficacy affects the level of skillful performance. This study represents an extension of the self-efficacy model to children with learning disabilities. By definition, learning-disabled children do not possess intellectual deficits but perform below their measured abilities. Repeated difficulties in school result in academic deficiencies, interfere with general self-functioning, and engender a sense of inefficacy for coping with cognitive demands (Palmer, Drummond, Tollison, & Zinkgraff, 1982). Compared with nondisabled students, those with learning disabilities hold a lower sense of cognitive competence (Evans, 1983; Lincoln & Chazan, 1979). Self-doubts about capabilities are associated with adverse emotional reactions, lackadaisical efforts, and lower skill development (Bandura, 1982; Schunk, 1984). One common educational practice is goal setting. Comparing present performance level with a desired standard can enhance motivation (Bandura, 1977b). Of central importance are goal properties: specificity, difficulty level, and proximity (Bandura, 1977b; Latham & Yukl, 1975; Locke, 1968; Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981). Goals that incorporate specific performance standards lead to higher performance than no explicit or general goals, such as, "do your best" (Locke, 1968; Locke et al., 1981). Assuming that students have sufficient ability, a positive relationship exists between difficulty level and performance (Locke et al., 1981). Proximal goals, which are close at hand, result in greater motivation than goals extending farther into the future (Bandura, 1977b). Research with children investigating different goal properties shows that goals enhance performance (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Gaa, 1973; Rosswork, 1977; Schunk, 1983a, 1983b; Tollefson et al., 1982). One purpose of this study was to explore the effects of proximal goals on the self-efficacy and skillful performance of learning-disabled children during a subtraction training program. In this study, some children pursued goals of completing a certain number of' pages of problems each session, whereas others worked without goal instructions. Proximal goals can instill in children an initial sense of self-efficacy for performing well, which is substantiated later as children observe their progress toward the goal (Schunk, 1984). Feelings of efficacy sustain motivation and foster skill development (Schunk, 1983a). Goal attainment, or even a close approximation, further validates self-efficacy (Schunk, 1983b). In the absence of goals, children should be less sure about their capabilities because they lack a standard against which to gauge progress. Self-doubts do not promote self-efficacy or skills (Schunk, 1984). Within this context, this study tested the idea that participation in goal setting enhances achievement behaviors. Half the proximal-goal children set their own session goals, whereas comparable goals were assigned to the other half. There are at least two ways that participation can affect performance (Locke et al., 1981). Participation often leads to self-set goals that are more difficult to attain than assigned goals, and goal difficulty increases performance (Locke et al., 1981). In the present study, objective goal difficulty was equated across the two proximal-goal conditions, thereby eliminating this possibility. Participation also can result in a high degree of goal commitment, which increases performance (Locke et al., 1981). People are more apt to accept goals when they believe they can attain them (Mento, Cartledge, & Locke, 1980). Furthermore, participation may be especially beneficial for persons low in need for achievement, who initially may hold low expectations for success (Steers, 1975). Children who set their own goals were expected to demonstrate the highest self-efficacy and skills. It was felt that participation would lead to high expectations for goal attainment. This sense of efficacy for performing well was expected to be substantiated later as children solved problems. In contrast, assigned-goals children might not experience a correspondingly high initial sense of efficacy. Given their prior difficulties in arithmetic, it seemed possible that they could perceive the goals as too difficult. To the extent that they felt somewhat less certain of their subtraction capabilities, such uncertainty would not foster self-efficacy or skills quite as well. A mathematical competency (subtraction) was chosen for several reasons. First, the present study focused on processes whereby skills and self-efficacy could be developed when they initially were low. The subjects were sixth graders who previously had been identified by the school district as learning-disabled in mathematics and who, despite much instruction in previous grades, still had not mastered subtraction operations. Thus, subjects were expected to enter the experiment with low skills and self-efficacy for solving subtraction problems. Second, the effectiveness of goal setting depends on subjects understanding the nature of the goal instructions (i.e., what they should try to accomplish) and being able to gauge progress toward the goal. Previous similar research with low-achieving but nondisabled students (Bandura & Schunk, 1981) shows that these conditions are satisfied using mathematical tasks and defining goals in terms of number of pages of problems to complete. From a practical perspective, students' subtraction deficiencies were thwarting development of more complex mathematical skills (e.g., division). It also was felt that the present results would have important implications for mathematics instruction because proximal goals fit well with resource teachers' normal lesson planning and teachers easily can implement goal setting procedures.