25 Oct 97
Steve Draper

Great! I ask a naive question, and back come all the connections I should have been able to think of, but in fact couldn't. I will assemble the answers at:

but here is a list of the connections made to the topic "learner confidence."

The Issues:

• Teaching an affective objective of confidence
• Motivation [but I used to think of motivation as decision about what to do]
• Confidence may be one essential precondition
• Cognitive apprenticeship
• Language learning [vs. learning to program].
• Confidence -> motivate -> inspire [what human lectures may do, even if good for nothing else]
• Bandura and self-efficacy
• Learned helplessness
• Need to teach/foster inner standards, but students may depend on a style they are used to.
• Working the tutor by apparent need for reassurance
• Confidence = knowing that you know (a) recognize what is wanted in terms of what you know, (b) realizing you do now know enough

The question for me came from a context of students learning how to program computers on a conversion MSc course, where (a) there is a big range of prior ability, so I see many students who don't need any confidence boosting, but also many that do, and (b) programming gives the intrinsic feedback of whether the program runs which seems to me (from of course a perspective of confidence) to be enough.

Your answers give me a somewhat better grasp on that difference. For me part of the puzzle is or was that by "motivation" I usually mean a decision on how to spend one's time, e.g., if coursework is for credit, then effort, in not then none. And these students do not lack motivation in the sense of desire for success and willingness to make an effort. So it isn't obvious to me that confidence is at all a related issue. But some of the reminders you sent it in fact are making a connection across that gap from deciding I could do it but don't think it's worth my time, to deciding that it's not worth my time because I couldn't do it successfully.