Self efficacy is an individual’s appraisal of their own competences within specific domains, whereas self worth is an individual’s overall view of themselves based on evaluations that others (peers, family, teachers) have made on them. Both self efficacy and self worth contribute to overall self esteem. Self esteem is therefore a two-dimensional construct. It is possible for both aspects to be high or low or for one to be high and the other to be low. Overall, self esteem affects confidence.
Resilience and confidence are dynamic traits and are therefore malleable. Supportive school environments can buffer against the effects of negative environments within homes and communities which detrimentally impact on both resilience and confidence. Students can be taught to develop their resilience, for example, by teaching them to recover from ‘failure’ or teaching them to be resilient to feedback. Exposure to teachers who empower students can dramatically improve a student’s confidence. In addition, the experience of academic success is a vital ingredient for improving confidence and self esteem. As students begin to realise that they are capable of achieving, their self efficacy starts to improve. Students can be taught to demonstrate social confidence in specific situations, even if inwardly they do not feel confident. They can be taught how to appear confident but more importantly a skilled teacher can provide students with genuine confidence by getting them to believe in themselves.
Access to a well-designed curriculum helps students to develop confidence. Knowledge and skills should be sequenced correctly. This enables students to make sense of new subject content because correct sequencing provides them with the foundational knowledge and skills upon which new content can be accommodated. In addition, access to a broad and rich curriculum which provides students with cultural capital is essential for developing social confidence and social mobility. One way of achieving this is to develop their vocabulary and knowledge so that students from all social backgrounds can experience and benefit from the same opportunities.
CASE STUDY
STUDENT LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME
YEARS 9 AND 10, PSHE
A secondary school created a student leadership team to support the school with the planning and organisation of key events. The student leadership team also supported induction and transition events for students joining the school as well as organising charitable activities and fundraising events. The team was made up of students from all year groups in the school. The students in Year 12 and Year 13 held senior roles and worked with school staff to develop a peer mentoring programme. These senior students worked with school staff to train students in Years 9 and 10 to become peer mentors for students in Year 7. The peer mentors provided a range of types of support including academic support and social and emotional support. The peer mentors were recruited to the role following an application and interview process which was led by the senior students with support from school staff. Through this process, students were required to demonstrate that they had the necessary character traits to be a good peer mentor. This process was again led by the senior students, but it was monitored by school staff who maintained final responsibility for the decisions that were made. The peer mentors completed a training programme that included guidance on how to be a good listener and when to refer cases to an adult in the school. The training involved role play exercises to support the peer mentors to respond to and communicate with others and to determine when it was appropriate to ask an adult for advice. The peer mentors were also taught about their role in relation to confidentiality and ensuring that they did not promise secrecy to the students they were working with. Following successful completion of the training course, each peer mentor was allocated a caseload of Year 7 students. Mentors met with their mentees during specific timetabled slots at break times, during lunch time and after school as well as at times during the registration period. The programme was co-ordinated by the PSHE lead teacher who monitored the impact of the programme and discussed improvements and changes three times per year.
DEVELOPING THE CO-CURRICULUM
As part of the character education curriculum, schools should ensure that there is strong provision for co-curricular activities. A well-planned co-curriculum can build social confidence and self esteem and improve motivation, attendance and academic outcomes for students (DfE, 2019b). Research demonstrates that participation in outdoor adventure programmes has positive effects on the psychological, behavioural, physical and academic outcomes of young people (Gutman and Schoon, 2013).
Activities may include access to sporting or other physical activities, performance, the arts, volunteering, debating, cooking and participation in service. This is not an exhaustive list. The critical point is that schools should ensure that all students can participate in the co-curriculum, including those who are the most disadvantaged. Barriers to participation may include the direct costs of activities and to address this, schools should subsidise activities to prevent financial constraints becoming a barrier to equal opportunities. The co-curriculum should be designed to enable young people to compete and perform. These opportunities improve social confidence and self esteem.
DEVELOPING AND PROMOTING THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING
Volunteering empowers students by enabling them to make a positive contribution to their local community. It helps students to develop a civic mindset and provides them with an opportunity to engage in meaningful work. Students can participate in a range of volunteering opportunities. These may include fundraising activities for local and national organisations, protecting the environment or providing services to elderly people in the local community. Research findings suggest that volunteering produces moderate effects for academic outcomes and small effects for non-cognitive outcomes including social skills, self perceptions, and motivation (Gutman and Schoon, 2013).
CASE STUDY
VOLUNTARY SERVICE
YEARS 7 AND 8, PSHE
A group of Year 12 and Year 13 students in a school created a student leadership team with the support of school staff. The student leadership team decided that they wanted to support students to access volunteering opportunities in the local community. The student leadership team created a working group to support the initiative and they invited local charity representatives into the school to discuss whether they could support the provision. A list of volunteering opportunities was drawn up and from this Year 7 and Year 8 students were able to pick the volunteering opportunities that interested them. The school’s careers adviser supported this process of selection to ensure that students were choosing volunteering placements that aligned with either students’ interests or aspirations. The careers adviser held overall responsibility for monitoring the programme and overseeing communication between the working group and the local charities. The list of volunteering opportunities has continued to expand, and the school now works with more charitable partners than it ever has before. The school has also committed to the programme by identifying and dedicating time within the existing curriculum to enable students to engage with voluntary opportunities. The school also supports students wishing to access these opportunities during the evening, at weekends or during school holidays. It has introduced a process for supporting parents to discuss these opportunities with the charity directly.
DEVELOPING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY
School leadership teams need to identify the barriers to participation in relation to some of the activities outlined in this chapter. Barriers could include the cost and timing of activities, lack of parental support and lack of confidence in students. Leadership teams should consider how these barriers will be addressed so that students from all backgrounds have opportunities to participate, particularly in the co-curriculum. The co-curriculum provides students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds with cultural capital by developing a broader range of interests, knowledge and skills. Access to a co-curriculum and volunteering
