Composition Forum 50, Fall 2022
http://compositionforum.com/issue/50/

Understanding Self-Efficacy in FYW: Students’ Belief in their Own Ability to Succeed in Postsecondary Writing Classrooms

Sam Hamilton and Anastasiya Kalyuk

Abstract: Students’ completion of a self-efficacy appraisal inventory focusing on the eight habits of mind outlined in the CWPA’s Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing can help individual students reflect and improve upon the specific and individualized learning approaches that will assist them as they transition into a postsecondary writing classroom. A recent IRB-approved-as-exempt study directed first-year writing students to rate their confidence in how well they were able to engage in specific writing-related actions. Respondents included 162 students from multiple sections of a first-year writing course taught in two semesters: 75 from 15 different Fall 2019 sections of a first-year writing course and 87 participants from 6 different Spring 2020 sections of the same course. The study found participating students perceived themselves strongest at executing writing-based courses of action related to Responsibility, Openness, and Persistence and weakest at executing courses of action related to Flexibility and Creativity. In light of students’ efficacy self-percepts pertaining to the eight habits of mind, the specific “writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences” in which students should engage include (1) assignments that encourage students to creatively and reiteratively compose, reimagine, and recompose pieces using a variety of modalities and conventions; and (2) assignments that encourage students to engage in data-driven metacognitive reflective writing.

Introduction

“[P]erceived self-efficacy is a significant determinant of performance that operates partially independently of underlying skills...the stronger the perceived self-efficacy, the more likely are persons to select challenging tasks, the longer they persist at them, and the more likely they are to perform them successfully.”
—Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (397)

First-year writing students arrive with complicated self-concepts about themselves as writers and students. They’ve built up these self-concepts through years of experience and instruction: direct first-hand mastery experiences, second-hand vicarious experiences, direct instruction from teachers, peers, family, media, community, and other sources. Teachers of first-year writing students ought to be in the game of attempting to understand these complicated self-concepts, just as we are in the game of changing these self-concepts, of providing an additional set of experiences and instruction—first-hand mastery experiences, second-hand or vicarious experiences, and direct instruction—that develop and improve students’ self-concepts about themselves as writers and students. Put simply, we want to know what kind of writers our students are so that we might help them become better writers.

For ten years now, The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, published by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), has served as a touchstone for writing teachers and students as they seek to develop and improve upon students’ writing. The Framework has been critiqued for overselling a humanist mindset (Boyle 538) or underselling the degree to which other disciplines are capable of developing students’ habits of mind (Hansen 541). Importantly though, the Framework still serves as what Peter Khost labels “a basic policy of college readiness in our subject area” (The Framework for Success... 136) that can be equally generative whether it’s being followed or resisted. With Khost’s judgment in mind, our study focuses on how students and teachers of first-year writing courses might make use of the Framework’s eight habits of mind as a tool for evaluating possible trends in the experiences students have before enrolling in our first-year writing classes. These habits of mind include curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. This study seeks to evaluate which of the eight habits of mind—and courses of action related to those habits of mind—first-year writing students perceive themselves strongest and weakest at executing. And in light of these first-year writing students’ personal judgments of how well they can execute courses of action pertaining to the eight habits of mind—or efficacy self-percepts— what “writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences” should teachers of first-year writing design and deploy to better “foster these habits of mind” (Framework 1)?

Our analysis elaborates on definitions, examinations, and pedagogical applications of concepts of central importance to both the Framework and composition studies writ large: habits of mind, metacognition, meta-awareness, self-efficacy, and reflection. This study complements Rebecca Powell’s qualitative examination of 12th graders’ writing habitus, their “writing experiences...and how...they value them” (121). Once graduated, the 12th graders Powell writes about then become first-year students in our courses, and it remains essential for us to understand how these students perceive their ability to execute courses of action required to deal with the writing challenges they’ll face in our courses and beyond.

Our concern with students’ efficacy self-percepts responds to an earlier call by Khost for further examinations of student self-efficacy in writing classes, as well as myriad examinations of the relationship between students’ writing practices and their perception, awareness, and regulation of those practices (“Researching Habits-of-Mind Self-Efficacy in First-Year College Writers”). Like Khost, ours is a study more concerned with metacognition than cognition, and so aligns closely with research projects of Elizabeth Wardle, Anne Beaufort (Reflection: The Metacognitive Move...), Crystal VanKooten, Raffaella Negretti, Dawn Opel, in addition to a collaborative project by Gwen Gorzelsky, Dana Driscoll, Joe Paszek, Ed Jones, and Carol Hayes. Unlike Wardle and VanKooten, we are less concerned with examining students’ awareness of their own practices than we are concerned with examining students’ evaluation of the efficacy of their own practices—a subtle, but significant distinction. Moreover, unlike VanKooten, we do not see our work as attempting to “build a more specific theory of meta-awareness about composition” (para. 3), but more as a consideration of well-established theories of metacognition, self-regulatory mechanisms, and self-efficacy within the context of the Framework’s definition of writing-based habits of mind. Our understanding of these theories draws from social cognitive examinations of metacognition, cognitive monitoring, and self-efficacy by John Flavell, Gregory Schraw and Rayne Dennison, and (centrally) Albert Bandura. Similar to Angela Clark-Oates’ Using the Eight Habits of Mind to Foster Critical Sustained Reflections: Active Teaching and Learning, this study also considers the affordances generated when one uses The Framework as a prompting mechanism for critical sustained reflection (though unlike Clark-Oates, those who engage in critical sustained reflection in this study are students and not teachers). In this way, this study commits itself to the paradigm of thinking in composition studies drawing from the work of John Dewey, Donald Schön, and Kathleen Yancey in its interest in the degree to which students’ reflection on, awareness of, and regulation of their writing practices helps them transition and transfer knowledges and practices with greater ease and success.

Key Terms

Because we see this study as contributing to a vein of scholarship in composition studies concerned with social cognitive theories within the writing classroom context, we believe it is important to identify and define terms central in the construction of the study: metacognition, metacognitive knowledge, cognitive regulation, and self-efficacy. We draw from Flavell, Schraw and Dennison, and Bandura in understanding two of the primary components of “metacognition” to be “metacognitive knowledge” and “cognitive regulation.” We understand “metacognitive knowledge” to refer to that which we know about how we think, while “cognitive regulation” refers to actions which we engage in to influence or regulate how we think.

A third component of “metacognition” is “metacognitive experiences,” which Schraw and Dennison, as well as Bandura understand to refer to activities we engage in that can improve or develop either our metacognitive knowledge, our cognitive regulation skills, or both. One such kind of experience of crucial importance in this vein of composition studies research is written reflection. Reflective writing is a process through which writers are able to enrich their metacognitive knowledge, as well as—in instances of “pre-flection” or forward-looking, anticipatory reflection—develop strategies for improving their cognitive regulation abilities.

Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy enriches this social cognitive theory of metacognition and cognitive regulation by recognizing that one of the key ways in which individuals might reflect on their own actions is to pass judgment on how successfully or not they are in executing those actions. This is distinct from, though related to, the formulation of metacognitive knowledge offered by Schraw and Dennison, as well as the model of meta-awareness offered by Wardle and elaborated upon by VanKooten. A student may develop a strong awareness of what actions she is able to execute (declarative and procedural knowledge), as well as when she ought to execute those actions (conditional knowledge), without fully forming an anticipatory picture of how successful or not she might be at executing those actions. Similarly, a student may be able to monitor what actions she is executing (cognitive monitoring), as well as evaluate the success of those actions upon execution of them (evaluation), without necessarily fully forming a sort of pre-evaluation or pre-judgment of how successful or not she might be at executing those actions.

This pre-judgment of one’s capacity to execute actions or behaviors is how Bandura defines self-efficacy, and an individual’s efficacy self-percept—that is, her perception of her own self-efficacy—influences the degree to which that individual is able to develop nuanced metacognitive awareness, as well as her ability to execute courses of action pertaining to cognitive regulation. As the epigraph indicates, writers’ perspectives on how well they write—their efficacy self-percept—can positively influence their writing performance. Think of the American folktale and children’s story “The Little Engine That Could”: thinking you can climb the big hill positively impacts the decisions you make before and while climbing that hill; thinking you can’t climb the big hill negatively impacts the decisions you make. Bandura puts it simply: “After people become convinced they have what it takes to succeed, they persevere in the face of adversity and quickly rebound from setbacks” (Self-Efficacy in Changing Societies 3). That is, students are more likely to write well when they believe they can write well.

Methods

Context

To explore students’ writing-related efficacy self-percepts, we asked 162 participants from 15 sections of a Fall 2019 first-year writing class and 87 participants from 6 sections of a Spring 2020 first-year writing class to complete self-efficacy appraisal inventories. These participants were all enrolled as students at a small liberal arts college in the East Central United States (hereafter, College).

The College is situated in a mostly rural farming community and is a primarily undergraduate institution with an undergraduate student population of approximately 1,600. The student body of the College draws heavily from the surrounding region. The make-up of the first-year class represented in this study follows that trend; 75% of the class lives in-state. Moreover, 32% of the class come from historically underrepresented groups, including Black or African American (15.8%), Hispanic (8.6%), Asian (0.8%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.2%), or Two or More Races (6.0%). A little under one-third (30.7%) of this cohort were first generation college students.

Our College’s curriculum requires first-year students to complete a three-credit, one-semester writing course entitled “Effective Writing,” that focuses on research-supported expository and persuasive composition. Entering students may “test out” of this curricular requirement by providing evidence of having completed a comparable writing-based course, either a dual-credit course or a course taken at a different college or university. All first-year students are also required to take a three-credit, one-semester course entitled Foundations in Liberal Arts (FILA) during their first semester on campus. Though these courses are taught from a variety of disciplinary perspectives by faculty across campus, writing short compositions is one of the primary assignments all students must complete in FILA. Both Effective Writing and FILA serve as prerequisites for a majority of courses offered across campus, so most first-year students at our College need to complete these courses during the first or second semester on campus.

The majority of the student participants (152 out of 162) are first-year students; eight are second-year students, one is a third-year student, and one is a fourth-year student. These second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students all passed the first-year writing class successfully, but were retaking the course to take advantage of the College’s grade replacement policy that allows students to retake courses for a higher grade.

Appraisal Inventory

Participating students were administered a self-efficacy appraisal inventory via Google Forms in the first week of the course. As a component of the first-year writing course’s standard curriculum, the appraisal inventory was administered to all students in all sections of first-year writing courses at the College, though only the results of students who agreed to participate are featured in the study. To understand the appraisal inventory, consider its two main elements: its form/structure and its content. The form/structure of the appraisal inventory is constructed according to Albert Bandura’s recommendations in Guide for Constructive Self-Efficacy Scales.

More specifically, the inventory directs respondents to rate themselves based on how confident they are on their ability to perform a specific task-level action based on the writing-related habits of mind. The action statements that make up the inventory have two components: a main clause focused on the specific action and a relative clause that introduces a common challenge to an individual’s ability to perform that specific action. For example, below is a non-writing-related statement commonly referred to throughout Bandura’s work:

I can resist eating sweet treats ...	... even when I am hungry and sweet treats are available.
Main clause action	Relative clause challenging context in which action is performed f

The relative clause of each statement is essential, according to Bandura, because it forces respondents to imagine how effective they are in engaging in the specific action in less-than-ideal circumstances.

As to the content, the appraisal inventory includes 24 main statements which draw from the habits of mind listed and defined in the Framework. Specifically, the tool focuses on the “eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing”—curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition—and it develops statements that draw from the bulleted lists of short, descriptive statements included under each habit of mind identified on pages 4-5 in the Framework. For example, the Framework’s entry for “openness” includes the following short, descriptive statements:

“Openness—the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world. Openness is fostered when writers are encouraged to

• Examine their own perspectives to find connections with the perspectives of others;

• Practice different ways of gathering, investigating, developing, and presenting information; and

• Listen to and reflect on the ideas and responses of others—both peers and instructors—to their own writing.” (4)

Following the suggestions of Bandura above—i.e., coupling a specific action with a challenging context in which that action is performed—the three self-efficacy statements related to openness from the appraisal inventory read as follows:

1. When writing, I can examine my own perspectives to find connections with the perspectives of others including people with whom I strongly disagree.

2. I can practice different ways of gathering, investigating, developing, and presenting information when those ways aren’t used a lot in my own major.

3. I can listen to and reflect on other people’s responses to my writing—both peers and teachers—even when they are critical of my writing.

Via a Google Forms document, students are presented with these first-person statements, and they must rate their confidence in how well they are able to engage in that action on a scale of zero to 100. Respondents can select any number between 0 and 100, ensuring a more granular response than would a Likert or even a zero to 10 scale.

0	10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100
Cannot do at all					Moderately certain can do					Highly certain can do

The logic of the Google Forms survey directs respondents to rate themselves on a single task-based statement at a time before allowing them to move on to the next statement. Additionally, the appraisal inventory does not specify the habit of mind from which the statement is derived, and the habit of mind focus of each statement rotates in the following order: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. That is, respondents read and respond to a statement focusing on “curiosity and writing,” then move on to a statement focused on “openness and writing,” and so on. Respondents complete three cycles, meaning that the appraisal inventory includes three statements for each habit of mind or 24 total statements. This means that for any individual habit of mind, participants self-appraise their efficacy on a scale ranging from zero (if they scored themselves “zero” on each of the three course-of-action statements) to 300 (if they scored themselves “100” on each of the three course-of-action statements). On average, the survey takes five to ten minutes to complete.

Results

The results below articulate which of the eight habits of mind—and courses of action related to those habits of mind—first-year writing students perceive themselves strongest and weakest at executing. The appraisal inventory data suggests common strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis efficacy self-percepts pertaining to writing-related habits of mind, both at the broader habit-level (groupings of three statements), as well as the more granular habit-based, course-of-action level (individual statements). Taken together, they provide a snapshot of the courses of actions and habits in which students commonly perceive themselves to be strongest and weakest at a given point in time. The snapshots below provide snippets of the complicated self-concept students possess upon entering into a first-year writing classroom, whether as a first-year, first-semester student (Fall 2019, see Tables 1 and 3), or a first-year, second-semester student (Spring 2020, see Tables 2 and 4). The self-identified strengths and weaknesses of student writers were identified first by:

1. Averaging the scores of each set of respondents (Fall 2019 and Spring 2020), both for a course-of-action level statement, or a habit-level grouping of these statements (hereafter “MEAN”);

2. Counting the number of respondents who self-identified as weakest in any given course-of-action level statement, or habit-level grouping of these statements (hereafter “LOW”); and

3. Counting the number of respondents who self-identified themselves as strongest in any given course-of-action level statement, or habit-level grouping of these statements ( hereafter “HIGH”).

Upon grouping student scores into the MEAN, LOW, and HIGH categories, we calculated the median of each category. In the tables below, scores below the median in MEAN and HIGH and above the median in LOW are highlighted in white, while scores above the median in MEAN and HIGH and below the median in LOW are highlighted in black. Scores that matched the median in any category are highlighted gray.

Habits of mind or habit-based course-of-action scores that were above the Median in the MEAN and HIGH and below the Median in the LOW categories are labeled “Strongest.” That is, for a habit of mind or habit-based course-of-action to be labeled “Strongest” required that three conditions be met:

1. Students’ average scores in that category must be higher than the median of all scores;

2. The total number of students who scored themselves highest in this category must be higher than the median of all scores; and

3. The total number of students who scored themselves lowest in this category must be lower than the median of all scores.

Scores below the median in the MEAN and HIGH and above the median in the LOW categories are labeled “Weakest.” That is, for a habit of mind or habit-based course-of-action to be labeled “Weakest” required that three conditions be met:

1. Students’ average scores in that category must be lower than the median of all scores;

2. The total number of students who scored themselves highest in this category must be lower than the median of all scores; and

3. The total number of students who scored themselves lowest in this category must be higher than the median of all scores.

As represented in the tables below, this means that those habits of mind or habit-based courses-of-action that are highlighted black in MEAN, LOW, and HIGH are “Strongest,” while those that are highlighted white in MEAN, LOW, and HIGH are “Weakest.”

Habit Level

Fall 2019 Participants

Fall 2019 participants perceived themselves as strongest when it came to being responsible, open, and persistent, and weakest when it came to being flexible and curious.

Table 1. Fall 2019 habits of mind, ordered by MEAN. Black highlighted scores represent “Strongest” scores.

HABIT OF MIND	MEAN	LOW	HIGH
Flexibility	190.43	21	5
Creativity	193.03	16	9
Curiosity	196.57	16	8
Metacognition	199.96	9	5
Engagement	206.12	12	7
Persistence	210.51	6	10
Openness	218.35	3	21
Responsibility	220.29	4	20
Median	203.04	10.5	8.5

Spring 2020 Participants

As anticipated, there are several points of correspondence between the efficacy self-percepts of Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 participants. First, even though the average habit-level scores for the Spring 2020 set are all consistently higher, the range between the lowest and highest average Habit-level scores remains stable: 29.86 difference for Fall 2019; 31.18 difference for Spring 2020. Indeed, the average efficacy self-percept scores for each Habit are all about 10 points higher for the second-semester participants than they are for the first-semester students. This would seem to suggest that all students’ completion of the required first-semester FILA course—as well as any other first-semester courses the Spring 2020 set of participants took—may have helped to improve participants’ efficacy self-percepts between the first and second semester.

Second, similar to the Fall 2019 participants, Spring 2020 participants also perceived themselves as strongest in being responsible and open and weakest when it came to being flexible and curious. Unlike the Fall 2019 participants, Spring 2020 participants additionally perceived themselves as strongest when it came to being engaged and weakest when it came to being creative.

Table 2. Spring 2020 habits of mind, ordered by MEAN. Black highlighted scores represent “Strongest” scores.

HABIT OF MIND	MEAN	LOW	HIGH
Flexibility	197.57	16	5
Creativity	197.78	25	3
Metacognition	207.4	9	4
Curiosity	208.78	17	7
Persistence	211.23	18	10
Engagement	211.47	10	13
Responsibility	226.63	3	20
Openness	228.75	2	27
Median	210.01	13	8.5

Course-of-Action Level

Fall 2019 Participants

When the habits of mind are broken down into their component course-of-action level statements, the groupings of course-of-action statements for which Fall 2019 participants perceive their efficacy to be strongest and weakest becomes less orderly. That said, some consistencies do exist when the three numbers are compared.

Table 3. Fall 2019 Habits-of-Mind Courses-of-Action, Ordered by MEAN. Black highlighted scores represent “Strongest” scores. Gray highlighted scores represent scores at the Median.

COURSE-OF-ACTION STATEMENT	MEAN	LOW	HIGH
I can connect the choices I make when writing to the audiences and purposes of the texts I’m writing even when I haven’t been directly told who the audience is or what the purpose is. (Metacognition)	58.18	15	0
When writing about something, I can come up with questions that my audience would be interested in reading more about even when I don't know or care much about the topic before writing. (Curiosity)	58.88	12	4
I can use a variety of different forms of writing to represent what I’ve learned, even when I’m not required to by an assignment or prompt. (Creativity)	60.9	9	2
I can approach a writing task in a variety of ways, depending on the task and my purpose and audience even when that requires me to use an approach I don’t regularly use. (Flexibility)	60.93	8	0
I can evaluate the effects and consequences of my creative choices when writing before I get any feedback on my writing. (Creativity)	63.56	9	6
I can figure out how to follow different writing conventions (formal/informal rules about content, organizational requirements, style guidelines, etc.) depending on the context even when those conventions are mostly new to me. (Flexibility)	63.74	11	5
I can commit to thoroughly exploring a topic, idea, or demanding task in writing even when other obligations make me crunched for time. (Persistence)	64.37	8	0
I can reflect on how I’ve written texts, how I might have written them differently, and I how I might write comparable texts even when those texts have been produced in a variety of situations or contexts. (Metacognition)	64.92	9	6
I can write about new ideas even when those ideas confuse or challenge me. (Engagement)	65.08	8	5
I can make connections between my ideas and the written ideas of others even when I find that writing challenging (or boring, or offensive, or confusing, or badly written, etc.) (Engagement)	65.3	10	2
I can make time to reflect on choices I've made when writing in light of the context, purpose, and audience even when I am busy and trying to meet a deadline. (Flexibility)	66.66	6	3
I can engage and incorporate the ideas of others into my writing even when those ideas directly challenge the ideas I’m writing about. (Responsibility)	68.18	6	7
I can take risks in writing by exploring new questions, topics, or ideas even when it means that what I end up writing is rough or unpolished. (Creativity)	68.44	9	8
When writing, I can examine my own perspectives to find connections with the perspectives of others including people with whom I strongly disagree. (Openness)	68.93	6	9
I can use different research strategies to find up-to-date and legit information relevant to my topic even when it means finding that information with tools other than Google. (Curiosity)	69.64	8	15
I can practice different ways of gathering, investigating, developing, and presenting information even when those ways aren’t used a lot in my own major. (Openness)	69.97	5	11
I can write about what I discover through research in a way that a variety of audiences would understand, even when they themselves haven’t done the same research. (Curiosity)	70.01	4	9
I can recognize my own role in what I learn and understand about writing even when I struggle to see the relevance of what I’m learning to me or my discipline/major. (Responsibility)	71.49	6	8
I can consistently take advantage of in-class and out-of-class opportunities to improve and refine my written work even when it’s not required. (Persistence)	72.15	9	14
I can follow through in the completion of tasks, processes, or projects related to writing even for lower stakes writing tasks or for writing courses that aren’t in my major. (Persistence)	75.37	3	11
I can build on my own view of the world when I make connections with the written ideas of others, even when those written ideas are different from my own. (Engagement)	76.18	3	17
I can use what I learn from my reflection on one writing project to improve my writing on later writing projects even when those projects are different from each other. (Metacognition)	77.55	4	18
I can listen to and reflect on other people’s responses to my writing—both peers & teachers—even when they are critical of my writing. (Openness)	81.38	1	22
I can give credit to the ideas of other writers even when I have to look up the rules for using appropriate attribution. (Responsibility)	81.59	3	34
Median	68.31	8	7.5

Fall 2019 participants perceived themselves to be weakest in 10 total Habit-based courses-of-action. Of these 10, the specific Habit-based course-of-action participants perceived themselves to be weakest in was connecting the choices they make when writing to the audiences and purposes of the texts they’re writing. The fewest participants perceived their efficacy as strongest in this course-of-action, the most perceived their efficacy as weakest in this course-of-action, and the average of all participants’ scores in this course-of-action was the lowest of any course-of-action level statement. Participants also perceive themselves to be weak in coming up with questions their audiences would be interested in reading more about and using a variety of different forms of writing to represent what they’ve learned; the average scores for these courses of action are the second and third lowest average scores, and the number of participants who perceived themselves as weakest in these courses of actions are the second and fifth greatest LOW numbers.

Alternatively, Fall 2019 participants perceived themselves to be strongest in nine total habit-based courses-of-actions. Of these nine, participants perceived themselves to be strongest in giving credit to the ideas of other writers, listening to and reflecting on other people’s responses to their writing, using what they learn from their reflections on one writing project to improve their writing in later writing projects, and building on their own views of the world when they make connections with the written ideas of others. These four courses-of-action had the greatest number of participants who scored themselves highest, the fewest number who scored themselves lowest, and the four highest averages.

Spring 2020 Participants

Table 4. Spring 2020 Habits-of-Mind Courses-of-Action, Ordered by MEAN. Black highlighted scores represent “Strongest” scores. Gray highlighted scores represent scores at the Median.

COURSE-OF-ACTION STATEMENT	MEAN	LOW	HIGH
I can connect the choices I make when writing to the audiences and purposes of the texts I’m writing even when I haven’t been directly told who the audience is or what the purpose is. (Metacognition)	60.94	15	0
I can use a variety of different forms of writing to represent what I’ve learned, even when I’m not required to by an assignment or prompt. (Creativity)	61.93	11	3
When writing about something, I can come up with questions that my audience would be interested in reading more about even when I don't know or care much about the topic before writing. (Curiosity)	62.24	15	1
I can approach a writing task in a variety of ways, depending on the task and my purpose and audience even when that requires me to use an approach I don’t regularly use. (Flexibility)	62.63	7	4
I can figure out how to follow different writing conventions (formal/informal rules about content, organizational requirements, style guidelines, etc.) depending on the context even when those conventions are mostly new to me. (Flexibility)	64.65	8	4
I can commit to thoroughly exploring a topic, idea, or demanding task in writing even when other obligations make me crunched for time. (Persistence)	66.29	12	8
I can write about new ideas even when those ideas confuse or challenge me. (Engagement)	66.86	9	7
I can take risks in writing by exploring new questions, topics, or ideas even when it means that what I end up writing is rough or unpolished. (Creativity)	67.02	12	8
I can consistently take advantage of in-class and out-of-class opportunities to improve and refine my written work even when it’s not required. (Persistence)	67.17	12	13
I can reflect on how I’ve written texts, how I might have written them differently, and I how I might write comparable texts even when those texts have been produced in a variety of situations or contexts. (Metacognition)	67.24	6	5
I can make connections between my ideas and the written ideas of others even when I find that writing challenging (or boring, or offensive, or confusing, or badly written, etc.) (Engagement)	67.6	4	5
I can evaluate the effects and consequences of my creative choices when writing before I get any feedback on my writing. (Creativity)	68.83	7	3
When writing, I can examine my own perspectives to find connections with the perspectives of others including people with whom I strongly disagree. (Openness)	69.54	10	8
I can recognize my own role in what I learn and understand about writing even when I struggle to see the relevance of what I’m learning to me or my discipline/major. (Responsibility)	70	7	10
I can write about what I discover through research in a way that a variety of audiences would understand, even when they themselves haven’t done the same research. (Curiosity)	70.23	5	5
I can make time to reflect on choices I've made when writing in light of the context, purpose, and audience even when I am busy and trying to meet a deadline. (Flexibility)	70.29	2	9
I can engage and incorporate the ideas of others into my writing even when those ideas directly challenge the ideas I’m writing about. (Responsibility)	71.25	4	9
I can practice different ways of gathering, investigating, developing, and presenting information even when those ways aren’t used a lot in my own major. (Openness)	74.41	4	7
I can use different research strategies to find up-to-date and legit information relevant to my topic even when it means finding that information with tools other than Google. (Curiosity)	76.31	6	17
I can build on my own view of the world when I make connections with the written ideas of others, even when those written ideas are different from my own. (Engagement)	77.01	2	15
I can follow through in the completion of tasks, processes, or projects related to writing even for lower stakes writing tasks or for writing courses that aren’t in my major. (Persistence)	77.77	4	16
I can use what I learn from my reflection on one writing project to improve my writing on later writing projects even when those projects are different from each other. (Metacognition)	79.22	2	19
I can listen to and reflect on other people’s responses to my writing—both peers & teachers—even when they are critical of my writing. (Openness)	84.8	1	34
I can give credit to the ideas of other writers even when I have to look up the rules for using appropriate attribution. (Responsibility)	85.37	0	37
Median	69.19	6.5	8

Data from the Spring 2020 inventories results in some correspondence. Spring 2020 participants perceived themselves to be weakest in seven total habit-based courses-of-action, and the specific course-of-action participants perceived themselves to be weakest in was also connecting the choices they make when writing to the audiences and purposes of the texts they’re writing. The fewest participants perceived their efficacy as strongest in this course-of-action, the most perceived their efficacy as weakest in this course-of-action, and the average of all participants’ scores in this course-of-action was the lowest of any course-of-action level statement. Participants also perceive themselves to be weak in coming up with questions their audiences would be interested in reading more about and using a variety of different forms of writing to represent what they’ve learned; the average scores for these courses of action are the third and second lowest average scores, and the number of participants who perceived themselves as weakest in these courses of actions are the second and third greatest LOW numbers.

Spring 2020 participants perceived themselves to be strongest in eight total habit-based courses-of-actions, and as with the Fall 2019 participants, the specific courses-of-actions Spring 2020 participants perceived themselves to be strongest in are giving credit to the ideas of other writers, listening to and reflecting on other people’s responses to their writing, and using what they learn from their reflections on one writing project to improve their writing. These three courses-of-action had the greatest number of participants who perceived their efficacy as strongest, the fewest number of who perceived their efficacy as weakest, and the three highest averages.

Discussion & Implications

As articulated in our opening line, students arrive in our classes with complicated self-concepts. As a way of modeling how a teacher of first-year writing students might proceed in their efforts to understand and develop these complicated self-concepts, we’ll focus our discussion below on the habits of mind for which students possessed the weakest (flexibility and creativity) and strongest (responsibility and openness) efficacy self-percepts, as well as the weakest and strongest specific courses-of-action related to those specific habits of mind.

At the habit-level, students perceive themselves to be weakest at engaging in the habits of mind related to flexibility and creativity. More specifically, they are not confident in their abilities to use a variety of different forms of writing or evaluate the effects and consequences of their choices when writing. Moreover, they are not confident in their abilities to approach a writing task in a variety of ways, nor are they confident in their abilities to figure out how to follow different writing conventions. Alternatively, students perceive themselves to be strongest at engaging in the habits of mind related to responsibility and openness. More specifically, they are quite confident in their abilities to give credit to the ideas of other writers and to listen to and reflect on other people’s responses to their writing. These findings beg two questions: why and so what? That is, why have these students entered their college writing classrooms with the efficacy self-percepts they have pertaining to the habits of mind and courses-of-action defined by the Framework? What prior experiences—curricular and extracurricular—have moved them to judge themselves to be effective in some habits of mind and ineffective in others? And what, therefore, should we, their college teachers, do about it? Or, in the language of the Framework, what “writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences” should teachers of first-year writing design and deploy to better “foster these habits of mind” (Framework 1)?

One thing teachers of first-year writing should do seems uncomplicated: more empirically-based research. Just as we followed Khost’s call for such research, so too do we wish to echo that call: “given the great need to supplement ... the unfortunately incipient state of empirical research on the Framework in general” (Researching Habits-of-Mind Self-Efficacy... 285), there should be more research that expands, elaborates upon, and challenges the methods and findings of this research study. Outside and above the refining of the appraisal inventory mechanism we used to generate our data, there are two key ways in which we plan on continuing this research project. First, we plan to gather and compare beginning-of-semester appraisal inventory data to end-of-semester data for both first-semester and second-semester first-year writing students. While we were able to gather both beginning and end-of-semester data for the Fall 2019 group of participants, the COVID-19 outbreak disrupted our ability to collect viable end-of-semester data from the Spring 2020 group of participants. Data from both the start and conclusion of the same semester could provide a glimpse of the development of each individual student’s efficacy self-percept from the beginning to the end of their first semester participation in a first-year writing course. Additionally, in future versions of the appraisal inventory, we seek to gather more descriptive data about student participants, including both demographic data (age, race, ethnicity, gender), as well as more institutional data (intended major, student athlete status).

What teachers should do in their classroom is more complicated. As is often the case, however, the path forward involves following our students. Why did these participants possess the efficacy self-percepts that they did? What does it mean that participants believe they’re strongest at being open and responsible and weakest at being creative and flexible? Who is the writer who feels comfortable giving credit where credit is due (i.e., citing sources) and “fixing” their writing when offered critical feedback, but doesn’t feel comfortable varying their approach to a writing task or generating engaging questions to address in a piece of writing? While the structure of our study precludes us from venturing forth much more than speculation founded in limited personal experience, our studentswere able to provide some insight.

In formative and summative reflective statements throughout the semester, students featured in this study hypothesized that perhaps one reason why they struggled with flexibility and creativity was not because they did not have opportunities to develop their flexibility and creativity in writing. Instead, students believed their weakness in flexibility and creativity came about because they had accumulated a lot of mastery-level experiences in completing assignments that tasked them with being inflexible and uncreative writers because of the degree to which those writing experiences were very controlled in terms of the purpose, content, and arrangement. More simply, students wrote reflective statements describing how they got very good at writing for timed-writing tasks associated with standardized testing. As one student explained in his reflective statement, preparing for the writing portions of these high-stakes tests influenced his approach to all writing tasks in other classes: “I typically sit down one time and write a paper ... I do it all at once and make myself concentrate on the paper I am writing to get it done.” The student admits that in high school, he always thought of himself as “a good writer...[who] got advanced scores on my [state-mandated tests].” It makes sense, then, why this student would believe his approach—in which he would “just sit and type”—was an effective practice: it worked before. For the most important and impactful writing tasks he engaged in—namely, his state-mandated tests—the “one sitting” approach served him well, and so he spent a lot of time perfecting this approach: read a prompt, compose a basic response to the prompt, spend limited time addressing surface-level grammatical/syntactical errors. And it’s important to note that this set of attitudes was useful and effective: all of the students in this study had successfully demonstrated proficiency in their state-mandated tests, and all of them performed well enough to be admitted into college.

Yet these same students also recognize that, as one student’s reflection succinctly put it, “writing a paper in one sitting and not looking at it again is not good.” While this recognition may seem obvious to many teachers of first-year writing, it remains a sincere and meaningful realization on the part of the student who experienced and articulated it. This is because the “one-sitting” approach that worked for them in high school, but wasn’t working for them in college, was not an approach born out of laziness or a lack of interest in writing. Rather, these students recognized it as a useful approach they had spent time, energy, and effort developing. As William Coles puts it in The Plural I, students possessed “a set of attitudes that [they] worked very hard to accumulate” (42) that helped them to write effectively in high school. And one of the most important writing tasks they regularly confronted as high school students was a timed response essay for a standardized test that must be completed in one sitting.

In light of these insights, one recommendation we wish to make regarding “what to do” is this: when seeking to understand why our students write the way that they do, we would do well to remember Yancey’s call to “to ask students to participate with us, not as objects of our study, but as agents of their own learning” (5). As we experienced, having students write narrative reflections on their own writing-related habits of mind works toward our goals of attempting to understand their complicated self-concepts and improving upon these self-concepts at the same time. As Bandura puts it, “The act of writing provides a familiar example of a behavior that is continuously self-regulated through self-evaluation” (Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, 336).

One way to guide students’ reflection toward improving both their efficacy self-percepts, as well as their performance, is to prompt them to consider how they might leverage their strengths to improve their weaknesses. For example, consider a student whose strengths and weaknesses follow the results above. That is, a student who is strongest at Responsibility and Openness, but weakest at Flexibility and Creativity. Following the results, this student is confident in giving credit to the ideas of other writers and listening to and reflecting on feedback. This student seems to understand a relational element to writing effectively. More specifically, such a writer seems to understand that writing effectively comes with an ethical obligation to be responsible in articulating how the ideas in one’s own writing draw from and are informed by the ideas present in some other person’s writing. Similarly, this same writer also understands that writing effectively can only happen if the writer is open to feedback from contributing reviewers, most likely their peers and teacher. Simply put, this student understands responding to texts and teachers as a kind of relationship transaction.

Following Bandura, the nature of the relational element a student understands draws from the mastery-level experiences they will encounter most frequently. These experiences emerge primarily from writing in a classroom setting in which there are requirements to cite one’s sources correctly and listen to and process peer and teacher feedback, and there are attending penalties if one doesn’t. What may be missing in these mastery-level experiences focused on the relational element of effective writing are those that explore or model a writer’s relationship with their audience. This writer has yet to extend the idea of relationships beyond teachers and citations to include audiences. This lack of mastery-level experience focused on a writer considering their relationship with their audience could account for students’ lack of confidence in their abilities to use a variety of different forms of writing or evaluate the effects and consequences of their choices when writing.

The word “extend” is important here because it appropriately identifies postsecondary writing classrooms as fundamentally, necessarily, and inextricably tied to secondary writing classrooms. It also highlights the importance of understanding and articulating to students that the work they will do in postsecondary writing classrooms is a scaffolded extension of the work they did in their secondary writing classrooms. Students experience this difference. As one articulated in a reflective statement, “The writing I have done in high school is a lot different than what is required in college.” The work is different, yes, but in degree, not in kind, and we have to be clear in pointing out that our goal as postsecondary writing teachers is to build upon their experiences, not replace or supplant them. Articulating that the learning students do in our postsecondary classrooms is an extension or elaboration of, rather than a departure from, the learning they did in their secondary classrooms gives credit where credit is due. Specifically, it acknowledges the efforts and experiences of students and the teachers they learned with before us. Students—and maybe even some of our institutional or disciplinary colleagues—might frame the work that happens in a postsecondary writing classroom as an opportunity for students to “unlearn” what they learned about writing in high school or learn “how writing really happens.” This framing narrative is myopic and wrong and allowing it to perpetuate effectively torpedoes the efficacy self-percepts of our students, while belittling the hard work of their former teachers. After all, why would they feel they were strong at any writing-related habit of mind if the mastery-level experiences they’ve had with writing prior to entering our classrooms was framed as something they needed to “unlearn”?

For students whose mastery-level experiences allowed them to feel confident in their abilities to be responsible and open writers, but weak in their abilities to be flexible and creative writers, we might tell them something like,

You’ve already learned how important relationships are when writing. You know that in order to be an effective writer, you must be responsible to other writers you hope to cite, and you must be open to the feedback of your peers. These are necessary conditions of being an effective writer! Necessary, but not sufficient. Just as you understand the necessity of your relationship, as a writer, with the other writers you will cite, and the reviewers who will be there to help you improve your writing, so too must you learn to understand and appreciate your relationship with the audience you hope to reach with your writing. Specifically, you must now learn how to reach this audience through a variety of different forms, and you must learn how to evaluate the effectiveness and the consequences of your choices when you are writing to your audiences in and through these varieties of different forms.

Such a statement encourages students to reflect on college writing not as a new experience, but as the next experience with writing. In doing so, they might reflect on the mastery-level experiences they have accumulated and understand them not as a set of experiences they have to unlearn or replace, but rather as a set of strengths they can leverage to continue their improvement as writers in our postsecondary writing courses. Students in our courses are, in a sense, the resident experts on their own writing practices, and their expertise ought to be validated and trusted as they reflect on and try to improve those writing practices. As the epigraph of our piece indicates, “the stronger the perceived self-efficacy, the more likely are persons to select challenging tasks, the longer they persist at them, and the more likely they are to perform them successfully” (Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory 397). Or, as one student puts it in a reflective statement, “the more I ... reflect on my writing and see areas for improvement as well as areas I succeeded in, the more confident I become in my writing, and the better it is.”

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