The Musical Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Middle School Band Students: An Investigation of Sources, Meanings, and Relationships with Attributions for Success and Failure

Author(s):  
Martin
2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Hewitt

In the present study, relationships between two components of self-regulation (self-efficacy and self-evaluation) and gender, school level, instrument family, and music performance were examined. Participants were 340 middle and high school band students who participated in one of two summer music camps or who were members of a private middle school band program. Students indicated their level of self-efficacy for playing a musical excerpt before performing it and then self-evaluated their performance immediately afterward. Findings suggest that there is a strong and positive relationship between self-efficacy and both music performance and self-evaluation. There was also a strong negative relationship between self-evaluation calibration bias and music performance, indicating that as music performance ability increased, students were more underconfident in their self-evaluations. Gender differences were found for self-evaluation calibration accuracy, as female students were more accurate than males at evaluating their performances. Middle school males were more inclined than females to overrate their self-efficacy and self-evaluation as compared to their actual music performance scores. These gender differences were reversed for high school students. There were no other statistically significant findings.


2015 ◽  
Vol 197 ◽  
pp. 1013-1017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessia Passanisi ◽  
Irene Sapienza ◽  
Silvia Budello ◽  
Flavio Giaimo

Author(s):  
Murat Bursal ◽  
Serap Yetiş

This survey design study was designed to test whether the graph skills and affective states of middle school students about graphs differ by their gender, grade level, and graph types (line, bar, and pie). The data collection instruments consisted of two scales developed by the authors and a Graph Skills Test, which consisted of graph questions from the previous TIMSS and PISA exams. Based on the findings, while middle school students were found to succeed at reading the data level graph questions, they were found to struggle in questions requiring higher graph skills, such as graph interpretation and graph construction. As for the affective states investigated, participants were found to hold high self-efficacy beliefs and positive attitudes toward graphs. No significant difference among the dependent variables (graph skills, self-efficacy beliefs about graphs, attitudes toward graphs, and graph literacy perceptions) was found by gender; however, grade level and graph type variables were found to impact students’ graph skills, graph attitudes, and personal graph literacy perceptions. Middle school students with less school experience with graphs (seventh graders) were found to hold more positive attitudes toward graphs than the eighth graders. On the contrary, eighth graders were found to perform better at graph questions requiring interpretations of the graph data. Also, participants in all subgroups were found to hold significantly higher personal graph literacy perceptions for the bar graphs, than the line graphs and pie charts. Based on the findings of the study, while middle school students were found to hold positive affective states about graphs, they were found to lack advanced graph skills. In agreement with the previous literature, it is recommended that graph literacy should become a dedicated part of the school curriculum.


Author(s):  
Atia D Mark ◽  
Steve Wells

Middle school students in Nova Scotia, Canada, are perceived to have low self-efficacy for achieving learning outcomes. While strong self-efficacy beliefs, developed through effective curricula, have been linked to improved academic performance, there is a need for formal evaluation of such curricula. The purpose of this study was to investigate a 10-week afterschool mentorship curriculum that has never been evaluated. The aim of the curriculum is to strengthen self-efficacy beliefs via relationship building exercises, public speaking training, and character education. Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, which states that treatment influences can alter the strength of self-efficacy, informed the conceptual framework. Evaluation questions explored apparent changes in the self-efficacy of the students from the perspective of seven adult caregivers and the program’s instructor. Interview data were triangulated with quantitative descriptive statistics on the self-efficacy scores of 10 middle school students before and after program participation using the Children’s Hope Scale. Comparison of pre- and posttest scores did not show remarkable differences in self-efficacy beliefs of the students. However, analysis of interview data revealed that children’s self-efficacy beliefs grew, the largest increase being in those described as reserved at the beginning of the program. This study promotes positive social change through an increased understanding that can inform efforts to increase self-efficacy in middle school students.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-354
Author(s):  
Martin Norgaard ◽  
Laura A. Stambaugh ◽  
Heston McCranie

Research investigating links between academic achievement and active music instruction has not previously differentiated between different types of instruction. In the current study, 155 seventh- and eighth-grade middle school band students were divided into two groups. Both groups received 2 months of instruction in jazz phrasing, scales, and vocabulary, but only the experimental group was taught to improvise. All instruction was part of the warm-up routine in regular band classes. All students were tested before and after instruction on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (cognitive flexibility) and the classic Stroop task (inhibitory control). At posttest, eighth-grade students in the experimental group scored significantly better on cognitive flexibility with a smaller percentage of perseverative errors, whereas the treatment had no effect on seventh-grade students on this outcome. Seventh graders, but not eighth graders, in the experimental group increased their posttest scores for inhibitory control, though this result was only marginally significant. In relation to previous research, the current results strongly suggest that far-transfer effects of active music participation depend on the nature of the instruction. Results of prior and future studies should therefore be interpreted in light of the type of music-making engaged by participants.


Author(s):  
Murat Bursal ◽  
Fuat Polat

This study investigated the graphing skills and some affective states of middle school students about graphs by their gender, grade level, and the common graph types used in science courses. Participants’ line graph skills, self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes toward graphs, and their personal literacy perceptions about different graph types (line, bar, and pie) are explored quantitatively. Qualitative data was collected about the views of participants about graphs in general, as well as about the factors that impact students like/dislike certain graph types. Based on the findings, while participants were found to lack line graph skills, they were found to hold high self-efficacy beliefs and positive attitudes toward graphs. No significant difference among the dependent variables was found based on gender; however, grade level and graph type variables were found to impact students’ graph skills and personal graph literacy perceptions. Among the commonly used graphs in middle schools, a vast majority of students favored bar graphs, mostly due to the simplicity of them, and disliked pie charts, as finding them difficult to draw.


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