Marcel LaFountain

Educational Psychology
Dr. Reid Riggle
5-9-15
For my Educational Psychology class, I volunteer at Sullivan Elementary School. My
duties there vary on a day to day basis, but mainly consist on reading with students, helping
students with their homework, and being a part of their enrichment time and helping them grow
as students. On one particular day, an event occurred that has stuck with me.
One day during my volunteering, I worked with a group of four female students during
their enrichment time. I will call them Patty, Veronica, Beth, and Natalie for the sake of this
paper. None of the girls really seemed too thrilled to be doing this project. The four of them
seemed like they really just wanted the day to be done so that they could go home. The teachers
and other workers there tried to make the activity sound fun, but the more explaining they did,
the harder the project sounded and the less the students wanted to do it. The project was four
three or four students to sit in a circle facing out, back to back, and draw what they saw in front
of them. This would hopefully end up becoming a panoramic picture, with each student ending
and starting where the student next to them left off. When all the pictures got put together, they
would end up creating a 360 degree view of the environment from the perspective that the
students were at.
When my group of students broke off from the big group and picked a spot, they openly
expressed how much they didnt want to do the project. I asked them why they didnt want to do
the project and Beth replied by saying that it was stupid and a waste of time. I told her that this

project was meant to enhance their creative skills and ability to communicate. I then asked the
girls if they didnt want to do the project because they didnt feel comfortable drawing, but they
all said they felt just fine drawing, it was just that they thought that they wouldnt enjoy the
project. I said to give it a try and I told them that theyd enjoy it if they just tried. So the four
girls all started to draw. Soon after starting, they were talking about where they were going to
end their drawing and where the next person should start. After a few more minutes, Natalie
asked me how she should draw the bridge that was in here view. I showed her on a separate
piece of paper how I would draw it, but told her that she doesnt have to do it that way and she
was thankful for that. She drew a bridge very similarly to what I drew, but not exactly the same.
When all the girls finished their drawings, they lined them all up in a line and looked to
see if they all matched up. The girls and I noticed there were a few places that didnt match up,
so they quickly fixed them up before time was up for enrichment and I told them how impressed
I was, mostly because I could never draw anything half as well as they did. I told them how well
they did and asked them if they enjoyed the activity. They all said yes, and Veronica adamantly
told me that she was really glad that we did this project, because she really enjoys drawing and
drawing things with other people.
The first topic that I will cover has to do with Banduras Theory of Self-Efficacy (Riggle,
2015), which refers to the beliefs in ones capabilities to organize and execute the courses of
action required to produce given attainments. People make judgments about their ability to
perform certain actions required to achieve a desirable outcome. Then based on their judgments,
they perceive whether or not to carry on with the behavior. In the case of the four girls, they had
the confidence that they could perform, but they didnt want to do the task because they didnt
like it.

Banduras theory also talks about how optimism plays a large role in the Self-Efficacy
Theory. If someone over estimates their ability to do a task, he or she will probably perform
better than someone else who doesnt believe that he or she can do very well. With the girls,
they didnt have optimism at first because they didnt want to do the task. After a little
convincing and time actually doing the task, the girls gained optimism and believed that the four
of them could successfully create a panoramic image. They believed in their abilities even more
than before or were able to create a great drawing of their surroundings.
The other topic that I want to discuss is cognitive apprenticeship (Chick, 2015).
Cognitive apprenticeship is how a master of a subject should teach novices in a subject, in order
for the novices to understand the subject the best. The first part of this theory is modeling
(Chick, 2015). Modeling is when the master of the subject demonstrates to his or her students

the steps in order to accomplish the task that is at hand. In the case of the panorama pictures, the
workers of the YMCA did a panorama ahead of time to show to the students and also let a few of
us volunteers try to do it first. In this way, it taught me how to make the panorama picture, but it
also helped us to become masters on the subject so that we could also help and teach the
students how to do it.
The next part of cognitive apprenticeship is scaffolding (Chick, 2015). Scaffolding is
when the teacher implements strategies in order to further the students learning. In this case, the
YMCA workers and the volunteers wanted the students to learn how to work together as a team
and the other smaller lesson was how to draw a panoramic picture. In order to make the students
learning better, they were broken up into groups, given an instructor who had some knowledge
on how to do the task, and all of the students had examples to look at. This helped my group of
four girls to know how to draw fences, trees, garbage cans, etc. and it also showed them the task

wasnt too hard to do, even though that wasnt the main reason why they didnt want to do the
task.
The next part of cognitive apprenticeship is coaching (Chick, 2015). Coaching is the
master helping the students and giving them constructive criticism on what the students are
doing. With the panoramic drawing, I gave hints to them on where each of them should start and
end. I also modeled a few times on how to draw a few things, which gave them ideas to
elaborate on for their own drawing. I also encouraged them when the group I was with was
doing well and gave them constructive criticism when I thought they needed it.
The second to last part of cognitive apprenticeship is reflection (Chick, 2015). Reflection
is a part of the process where the students reflect on the experience and outcomes of what they
just accomplished compared to those of the master of the subject. The master is the facilitator of
this part and he or she is meant to ask thought provoking questions like how the students thought
they did compared to the example of the master, or how well do the students think they did
before comparison. This part is meant for students to take time and think about how well they
thought they did and not how well the teacher thought they did. For the four girls, I asked them
questions at the end of the activity to see what they learned, if they liked the task, and if they
could do it again, what would they do differently.
The final part of cognitive apprenticeship is fading (Chick, 2015). Fading is when the
teacher starts to take a step back in the learning process of the students because the students
knowledge of the subject is closing in on the masters knowledge. Fading is when the teacher
give less and less help to the students because the students understand whats going on. The
students dont need all the help they received at the beginning, so the master slowly fades out all
of the ways that the master helped them. In this case, I helped less and less when it came to

drawing things, what they should include in the pictures, and where they should start and end
each picture.
This learning event really show cased cognitive apprenticeship and the Self-Efficacy
Theory. The learning event was a little different because the students werent learning a school
subject, but rather they were learned how to work as a team and how to communicate effectively.
Nonetheless, it was a very important lesson to teach and Im happy to have been a part of it.

References

Chick, N. (2015). Center for Teaching. Retrieved May 10, 2015, from
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/
Riggle, R. (2015). PowerPoint Presentation - Self-Efficacy Theory: Albert Bandura.
Retrieved May 10, 2015, from http://education.snc.edu/ed120/selfefficacy.ppt.htm