Limited health literacy is a national problem. Nurses are in a position to address patients' limited health literacy skills using a universal precautions approach through the teach-back process. The purpose of this project was to plan a program to educate nurses on best practices in patient education. The theoretical framework informing this work was Bandura's social cognitive theory, which asserts that increases in knowledge and self-efficacy are precursors to affecting behavior change. The logic model was used to guide the project planning processes. Evidentiary sources included literature obtained online and through database searches, input from a team of experts and institutional stakeholders, and surveys from project participants. Ongoing evaluation analyses of team members' feedback allowed for real-time changes to program content and meeting logistics. Team members' agreement about the meaningfulness of the project's goal, activities, and leader effectiveness revealed a mean score of 4.64 out of 5. Team members indicated that teach-back could improve patients' self-management ability and understanding of disease processes. The project outcome was a nurse education toolkit containing easy access to comprehensive learning resources tailored for use at a critical-access hospital. Nurses can positively impact social change by honing skills in the teach-back process as a way to evaluate patients' understanding of self-management and understanding of disease processes. The patients' understanding of educational materials pertinent to their disease process, self-care, and discharge is vital to their well-being and safety in the post hospital environment.

Teachers throughout the United States show low levels of self-efficacy which not only affects their own well-being in the profession but also their students' opportunity to learn. The gap in the literature addressed by this study is the relationship between self-efficacy and mindfulness. Grounded in Shapiro's model of mindfulness and Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between prekindergarten to grade 12 teachers' 5 facets of mindfulness scores and their perceived level of self-efficacy score at Regional School District (RSD, a pseudonym). The study is a nonexperiemental correlational design for which 130 prekindergarten to grade 12 teachers from a total of 633 teachers (40% response rate) completed an online-administered survey called the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the Teachers' Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES). The Pearson correlation coefficients showed significant relationships between self-efficacy scores and the overall mindfulness score (p = .000) as well as in the 4 facets describing (p = .007), acting with awareness (p = .002), nonjudging of inner experience (p = .000), and nonreactivity to inner experience (p = .000). Observing (p = .295) was the only facet where a significant relationship with self-efficacy was not found. When teachers use some of the 5 facets of mindfulness consistently, a potential positive social change benefit may be increased self-efficacy, which might lead to increased teacher satisfaction, lower attrition rates, and may affect positive social change in students meeting their learning goals.

The number of robotics competitions has steadily increased over the past 30 years. Schools are implementing robotics competitions to increase student content knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Companies in STEM-related fields are financially supporting robotics competitions to help increase the number of students pursuing careers in STEM among other reasons. These financial supporters and school administrations are asking what the outcomes of students participating in competitive robotics are. Few studies have been conducted to investigate these outcomes. The studies that have been conducted usually compare students in robotics to students not in robotics. There have not been any studies that compare students to themselves before and after participating in robotics competitions. This may be due to the lack of available instruments to measure student outcomes. This study developed an instrument to measure the self-efficacy of students participating in VEX Robotics Competitions (VRC). The VRC is the world’s largest and fastest growing robotics competition available for middle and high school students. Self-efficacy was measured because of its importance to the education community. Students with higher self-efficacy tend to persevere through difficult tasks more frequently than students with low self-efficacy. A person’s self-efficacy has major influence over what interests, activities, classes, college majors, and careers he or she will pursue in life. The self-efficacy survey instrument created through this study was developed through an occupational and task analysis (OTA), and initial content and face validity was established through the OTA process. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted to assist in instrument validation. The reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha. Face validity was established through the OTA process. Construct validity was established through the factor analyses. The processes of the OTA and factor analyses have created an instrument that results indicate is reliable and valid to use in further research studies.

Previous research has shown that mathematical self-efficacy is positively correlated with mathematical performance level. However, in elementary classroom settings, teachers noticed that students with high mathematical self-efficacy had low mathematical performance level. On the other end of the spectrum, there are students who have low mathematical self-efficacy yet excel in mathematics. Discovering what factors are common among these two types of students can aid teachers in helping these students improve their self-efficacy and mathematics performance. This explanatory mixed-methods design was conducted in a K-6 elementary school with the research participants consisting of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students. The first of two research phases included assessing students’ mathematical performance level and mathematical self-efficacy. Utilizing the criteria of high or low performance in correlation to high or low self-efficacy, the students were placed into one of four categories; high performance/high self-efficacy (High P/High SE), low performance/low self-efficacy (Low P/Low SE), high performance/low self-efficacy (High P/Low SE), and low performance/high self-efficacy (Low P/High SE). Phase II of the research included interviewing the top two students from the High P/High SE group and the bottom two from the Low P/Low SE group as well as all of the students in the High P/Low SE and the Low P/High SE groups. After the interviews were analyzed, the researcher identified the factors that are common to the High P/Low SE and Low P/High SE groups that were not found in the High P/High SE or Low P/Low SE groups. Some examples of these factors for students with High P/Low SE included feelings of jealousy, not feeling smart even when the math is easy, and not feeling encouraged by teachers and parents. Examples of these factors for students with Low P/High SE included preferring completing assignments in a group and giving up when the mathematics gets difficult. The potential implications of this research may be used in elementary classrooms to help teachers identify outlier students as well as help students better align their self-efficacy with their achievement level. The intended audience of this research was elementary mathematics teachers.

Background: As obesity continues to be a global epidemic, health professionals continue to search for effective intervention and prevention programs. As suggested early in the 20th century, sport participation creates an environment not only for one to be physically active at a particular moment, but also to cultivate and develop skills necessary to lead a physically active lifestyle across one’s lifespan. Further, sports can provide individuals with an ideal environment to cultivate the psychological constructs of resilience and self-efficacy, traits that can provide them with protective agents that support physical and mental health, thus promoting greater life satisfaction. Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine the impact of previous high school sport participation on college freshmen’s current levels of exercise self-efficacy, resilience, and psychological need satisfaction in exercise; and (2) to examine relationships between demographic variables and exercise self-efficacy, resilience, and psychological need satisfaction in exercise (PNSE). Methods: A cross-sectional, stratified random sampling technique was employed to collect responses from college freshmen across the country (n = 156) using a SurveyMonkey survey instrument. ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H tests were completed to examine differences, based on demographic and sports participation factors, on the constructs of exercise self-efficacy, resilience, and PNSE. Independent samples t tests were conducted with dichotomous demographic variables. Ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple linear regression modelling was completed to attempt to predict exercise self-efficacy, resilience, and PNSE scores for respondents based upon their demographic and sports participation variables. Results: The results of analyses indicated that both resilience and PNSE, but not self-efficacy, were associated with sports participation. High school GPA, total physical activity, having met moderate PA guidelines, and being a collegiate athlete were each associated with exercise self-efficacy. Furthermore, high school GPA, total physical activity, freshmen standing, and being a collegiate athlete were each associated with resilience. Lastly, total physical activity and moderate PA guidelines met were associated with PNSE. Conclusion: The findings of this study may support sports participation as a way to develop exercise self-efficacy, resilience, and PNSE. Collectively, these findings may support the development of a model for adolescent programming that could include the development of each of these constructs, the implications of which could positively affect both academic and athletic domains.

With the growing concern over the reduction of university students pursuing degrees in STEM fields, there are a number of entities sponsoring and implementing programs for young people in order to promote interest in and self-efficacy for these fields. Summer Engineering Academies (SEAs) are implemented in a variety of settings by stakeholders with a single purpose: to expose young people to the fields and work of engineers in the hope of recruiting them. This study is seeks to identify whether any positive changes to the self-efficacy of the participants occurs through the curricula of the program. This self-efficacy can be the driving force for many young people as they feel that they are both capable of success in addition to the desire to pursue a career in the field. The SEAs in this study serve a variety of age groups and specialized demographic sub-groups; of greatest interest is the possible impact of these programs on traditionally under-represented groups. Each program hosts a specific demographic sub-group but they all share specific pedagogical practices in order to identify which may emerge as best practices in affecting change on the self-efficacy of the participants toward engineering. A secondary purpose was to identify which, if any, practices had a positive impact on the participants’ self-efficacy and presume those as best practices across demographics. The programs were found to have a positive effect on the participants as identified through focus groups, journal entries, and personal interviews with the students. There were no identifiable differences in the impact of the practices between the subgroups. Each subgroup had gains in self-efficacy from each of the instructional practices which may allow for the distinction of best practice to be used in their description. These practices include: the use mentors or role models in face to face experiences; hands-on learning with tangible results; and recognizable real-world applications. Each practice yielded a positive result, but none of them appeared to be more successful with any group than the others. This allows them each to be considered a productive instructional strategy for the increase of self-efficacy of participants toward engineering.

Thesis advisor: Gustavo Morello / Given the endless times I have heard “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, the value of social networks became the forefront of this sociological study. Throughout this study I investigate the relationship between social capital and self efficacy. I interviewed ten undergraduate, low income students at medium sized school in the Northeast on their social connections throughout high school and college experience. These same respondents then took a General Self Efficacy scale to measure their perceived self efficacy. The study finds that those with higher measures of social capital also demonstrate higher perceived self efficacy. More importantly, social capital seemed to be more effective in providing resources and building self efficacy when there was a shared identity or experience between the student and the resource. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

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Research indicates that music teachers generally did not nurture student self-efficacy beliefs for musical performance, suggesting three possible reasons. It might be that teachers lack knowledge about self-efficacy, do not have a valid or reliable method to evaluate or measure student self-efficacy, or possess insufficient strategies for developing self-efficacy beliefs (Zelenak, 2011a). In light of these findings, Zelenak (2011a) developed the Music Performance Self-Efficacy Scale (MPSES) (see Zelenak, 2011b) to provide teachers a way to measure the strengths and/or weaknesses of the four sources of self-efficacy information as reported by their students in relation to music performance. The theoretical framework for this study draws from Bandura’s (1986) construct of self-efficacy, a derivative of social cognitive theory, which is based upon the interactive relationship among behavior, cognitive factors, and environmental influences, with forethought as a crucial factor. The purposes of this study were to discover to what extent the teaching experiences, education, and self-efficacy beliefs of teachers influenced student self-efficacy beliefs, and to discover to what extent student self-efficacy beliefs changed between pretest and posttest with teacher intervention of using self-efficacy enhancing teaching methods in the classroom. Participants were currently enrolled music students in middle or high school (N = 242) and their respective music teachers (N = 5) in one school district in West Virginia. Results were compared according to the students’ grade level as well as to the teachers’ teaching experiences, educational backgrounds, teachers’ reported self-efficacy beliefs, and teacher intervention. Due to small teacher sample, the current findings cannot be generalized Analysis of raw score data provided some insight into whether the independent variables affected the students’ pretest and posttest MPSES scores. All student participants’ scores improved from the pretest to the posttest, with the greatest changes being found in the teachers’ years of experience, educational background, and teacher self-efficacy categories; however, the statistical analysis of the data was found not to be significant. Future studies, especially those including qualitative data from teachers’ classroom experiences, would provide a wealth of knowledge for continued research on how music teachers can help nurture their students’ music performance self-efficacy beliefs.