Marva Collins's Self-Efficacy and How She Developed Her Students' Self-Efficacy

    Self-efficacy, which refers to an individual's belief in their own capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments, has been examined to be a meaningful predictor of people's success. In this post, we utilize theories of self-efficacy to understand Marva Collins's foundation of her own belief and how she fostered her students' self-efficacy and achievement. 

The Sources of Marva's Self-Efficacy

    Marva Collins's powerful sense of self-efficacy was built in her childhood when her grandmother taught her how to read before school age, and her father consistently encouraged her to break the discrimination towards Black people and establish her career. Identified by Albert Bandura and other psychologists, the four key sources are previous mastery experiences, observations of similar others performing the same behavior, verbal persuasion from others, and emotional/physiological states.   

    Marva Collins grew up in Alabama in the 1930s, where there was a great deal of discrimination. Her father's unwavering belief in her potential to break the stereotype planted a seed of confidence. From a very young age, her father challenged her to solve problems independently (e.g., doing chores), read great books (e.g., William Shakespeare), and defend her ideas in their discussions. Marva's self-efficacy grew as she succeeded in overcoming the academic and life difficulties. These experiences proved to her that she was capable of high intellectual achievement and a meaningful life. This foundational belief allowed her to confidently pursue and earn her college degree as the expected next step in her journey of mastery. She believed she could learn because she had already been succeeding at learning her whole life.

From Belief to Action: Her Self-Efficacy Influenced Her Behavior

    A strong sense of self-efficacy doesn't just make a person feel capable; it directly influences their choices, effort, and persistence in the face of obstacles. People with high self-efficacy are more likely to embrace challenging goals and recover quickly from setbacks. This explains Marva Collins's bravery in fighting against conventional education and building her own school. Dissatisfied with the low expectations in curriculum and discrimination against underprivileged students in the Chicago public schools where she taught, she took action propelled by her self-efficacy. She invested her own pension money (initially, $5,000) to create her own school, Westside Preparatory School, in her own home. She empowered herself to create the environment she knew children needed, demonstrating a high level of agency fueled by the core belief that she could and must do it.

Building the Belief in Others: Fostering Student Self-Efficacy

    At Westside Preparatory School, one important strategy that Marva Collins consistently used in her teaching was motivational empowerment. She provided constant verbal persuasion to build her students' self-efficacy, which played an essential role in her belief system and her success. She told her students every day that “You are bright, you are talented, you are unique.” 

    But she didn’t stop at empty praise. She also helped her students gain mastery experiences. She gave them complex work. For example, she asked her students to read Aesop's fables, William Shakeand speare, and Tolstoy, with scaffolding and guidance provided. When a student struggled, she didn’t lower the standards or let them just quit. She broke the task down until they could succeed. This process fostered what psychologists call cognitive hope, which is a positive motivational state based on the belief that one can find pathways to desired goals and muster the motivation to use those pathways. She gave her students the pathway (e.g., hard work, classic literature) and the empowerment (her unwavering belief in them), allowing them to hope and strive for a future they once thought was impossible.

Her Growth Mindset in Students

In Marva Collins's work, we can consistently see her growth mindset towards her students' development. Growth mindset refers to the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. This is the direct opposite of a fixed mindset, which believes intelligence is static. Marva Collins rejected the fixed mindset labels the system had placed on her students. As stated in her book (p. 42), she never saw a stupid child or told any student, "You can't do it." Her most powerful tool was reframing struggle. When a student said, “I can’t do it,” she would immediately correct them: “You can! Let’s try again. Say ‘I can.’” This positive approach taught students that difficulty is not a permanent state of inability but a temporary step on the path to mastery. Her growth mindset shaped her students' view of their temporary difficulties and nourished their self-confidence. Under this growth-oriented environment, her students were open to taking challenging tasks and resilient to dealing with setbacks in their studies.