Browsing by Author "Mähönen, Iina"

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the seven-grade self-efficacy beliefs change during a positive pedagogical intervention. The intervention aims to activate and optimize all four areas that according to Bandura have a positive impact on self-efficacy. These sources are mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasions, and physical and emotional states. The key skills of future working life are creative problem solving, self-guidance and constant learning. The school should provide opportunities to develop essential abilities and skills for future challenges and working life. The above-mentioned key skills can be developed by craft education, as working in the craft subject is exploratory, inventive and experimental, where the students courageously and curiously seeks for new ideas. To be able to face new challenges or take on new skills, one must have confidence in their own abilities. Self-efficacy impacts what a person dares to do, how much they are willing to see the effort in front of the task, and how persistently they try when facing difficulties. In this study, the analysis of self-efficacy focused on these two themes: pupils’ perceptions of one’s own competence, and the concepts of effort and persistence. In this study, support for self-efficacy was approached by qualitative intervention research. The intervention was carried out and the research material was collected in a primary school, where I worked as a part-time craft teacher. The most important part of the intervention was feedback and the observation of the learning process. The subjects were eight pupils from whom all the different parts of the research material was collected. The research showed that pupils’ perceptions of their own skills and competence in craft lessons improved during the intervention. The concepts of effort and persistence were improved in the following areas: experience of solving challenging task, problem solving, coping with difficult situations, achievement of goals and attitudes towards own mistakes. It can also been seen from the research material that the beliefs of one’s own abilities became more positive among learning-oriented pupils than performance-oriented students during the intervention.