The Influence of the Group on the Self: A Study on the Effect of Collective-efficacy and Digital Collaborative Reading on Self-efficacy in the Foreign Language Classroom.

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The Influence of the Group on the Self: A Study on the Effect

of Collective-efficacy and Digital Collaborative Reading on

Self-efficacy in the Foreign Language Classroom.

Corné Weidenaar 10956662

Master thesis at the University of Amsterdam Supervisor ILO: dr. G.C. Veldwijk Supervisor FGW: dr. R. van der Zwaard

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Abstract

This case-study investigates the possibility to affect student self-efficacy in foreign language reading with the generally higher sense of collective-efficacy by addressing the following research question: how does collaborative reading through chat affect student self-efficacy in L2 reading? Nineteen students participated in weekly group-oriented collaborative reading sessions to foster a higher sense of collective-efficacy. The students worked collaboratively in five groups, guided by group leaders who were the students with the highest self-efficacy, in dedicated discussion channels in Microsoft Teams for one month. The students received two individual reading assignments with added self-efficacy questionnaires at the start and end of this case-study to determine if their self-efficacy showed changes after the collaborative reading sessions. The students also received a collective-efficacy questionnaire to ascertain that the students had a higher sense of collective-efficacy than self-efficacy at the start of this study. Analyses of changes in student self-efficacy showed increases in self-efficacy up to 42.9% in individual students and a general increase of 15.5% among non-group leaders, but the significance of these results is equivocal due to the limited amount of students

participating in this study and the many variables involved in altering self-efficacy. However, student assessment of the collaborative reading sessions was positively orientated towards the use of collaborative reading to increase student motivation and reading proficiency.

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Introduction

The focus of this case-study is to research the use of collaborative reading to influence the perceived self-efficacy of students. Self-efficacy could be beneficial for student motivation concerning foreign language reading tasks and students could even experience increased amounts of goal attainment in reading tasks by collaborating and fostering a high sense of self-efficacy (Bandura & Schunk, 1982; Serrano & Pons, 2014; Ebbens & Ettekoven, 2015) . The current educational system relies on the use of technology to teach students because of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus and the subsequent closing of the schools and educational organizations in the Netherlands. Fortunately, many researchers have been experimenting with new uses for technology prior to the covid-19 outbreak (Pellettieri, 2010; González-Lloret & Ortega, 2014) while other researchers have been studying the effects of

technological appliances on education (Motterham & Thomas, 2010; Lin, 2014; van der Zwaard & Bannink, 2014).

For instance, technology could be used as a medium for communication which allows students to collaborate in a digital classroom as opposed to them participating in teacher-fronted digital seminars for the entirety of the lockdown. Allowing students to collaborate stimulates them to learn effectively (Ebbens & Ettekoven, 2015) and it has been suggested that it could bolster the students’ sense of perceived self-efficacy. Bandura and Schunk (1981) suggested that a strong sense of efficacy fosters higher levels of ‘motivation, academic

accomplishments and development of intrinsic interest in academic subject matter’ (p. 597) which suggests that a high sense of perceived self-efficacy could be considered beneficial for students. However, due to the closing of the schools, the task of fostering self-efficacy among students has become increasingly challenging because of the lack of conventional contact between students and the teachers. This study was constructed and subsequently adapted to explore the educational merit of the use of computer mediated collaboration on the perceived

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self-efficacy of students by letting them read collaboratively in carefully constructed collaborative reading sessions. Following these reading assignments, the students were requested to fill out questionnaires to uncover if (digital) collaboration could be considered a beneficial tool for instilling a higher sense of self-efficacy in students.

Literature review

What is efficacy?

Perceived self-efficacy, commonly abbreviated to self-efficacy, is a term coined by the renowned psychologist Bandura. Perceived self-efficacy concerns ‘beliefs in their [people’s] capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given

attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3). In other words, perceived self-efficacy is the belief people have in their own capabilities to perform a task and reach certain goals in said task. This definition suggests that self-efficacy is closely related to the notion of self-confidence. However, according to Bandura, self-confidence concerns having a strong belief in

something, either positive or negative, but not specifically in your own capabilities (Bandura, 1997, p. 382). Self-confidence can be similar to self-efficacy in contexts that concern a strong belief in your ability to achieve certain set goals. In this context, self-efficacy could be

considered ‘task-specific self-confidence’ (McCormick & Martinko, 2004, p. 6). A higher task-specific self-confidence helps people to accomplish goals in certain areas with more motivation and resilience while a lower task-specific self-confidence could have a negative influence on motivation, resilience in the face of setbacks and even goal attainment (Bandura, 1997, p. 3; McCormick & Martinko, 2004, p. 3). This means that a lower task-specific self-confidence influences the determination to reach a goal, such as becoming a top athlete or academic accomplishments, similarly to self-efficacy.

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As previously mentioned, a strong sense of efficacy has been shown to results in higher levels of motivation, academic accomplishments and development of intrinsic interest in academic subject matter (Bandura & Schunk, 1981, p. 597). These supposed merits of a high sense of self-efficacy signify the importance to stimulate the self-efficacy of people to influence the ‘courses of action they [people] choose to pursue, how much effort they put forth in given endeavours, how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles and failures (…) and the level of accomplishment they realize’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 3).

However, self-efficacy is not merely a cognitive process which can be influenced or altered as desired: self-efficacy and influences on self-efficacy are situated within a broader framework of social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory operates on the basis that people acquire knowledge through cognitive processing of (mostly) socially situated information. The experiences humans have while being part of a society are the basis of human thought, action and knowledge (Bandura, 1986; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998) and self-efficacy beliefs have been found to significantly influence the acquisition of new knowledge (Bandura, 1997, p. 33-35). These self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, can be subjected to the influence of social persuasion when ‘people are socially persuaded that they possess the capabilities to master difficult situations and are provided with provisional aids for effective action they are likely to mobilize greater effort than those who receive only the performance aids’ (Bandura, 1977, p. 198), which signifies the importance of social influence on self-efficacy. However, the influence of environmental and social factors on self-efficacy:

‘will depend on how it is cognitively appraised. A number of contextual factors, including the social, situational, and temporal circumstances under which events occur, enter into such appraisals. For this reason, even success experiences do not necessarily create strong generalized expectations of personal efficacy (Bandura, 1977, p. 200).

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People do not influence their so called ‘future efficacy’ solely through social experiences, they take the environmental factors, personal factors and behaviour into consideration after which they can engage in self-observation, self-judgement and self-reaction to self-regulate their learning and their future efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1997).

Bandura expanded upon the notion of self-efficacy within the context of social

cognitivism, stating that: “Social cognitive theory extends the conception of human agency to collective agency. People's shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desired results are a key ingredient of collective agency (...) People's shared beliefs in their collective-efficacy influence the types of futures they seek to achieve through collective action”

(Bandura, 2000, p. 76). Groups of people have been perceived to achieve goals more easily if their collective-efficacy is high because: ‘The higher the perceived collective-efficacy, the higher the groups’ motivational investment in their undertakings, the stronger their staying power in the face of impediments and setbacks, and the greater their performance

accomplishments’ (Bandura, 2000, p. 78). Collective-efficacy has been suggested to have a substantial influence on the collective motivation, resilience and performance

accomplishment of groups, similarly to the influence of self-efficacy on individuals. These mentioned benefits subsequently posit both a high sense of self and collective efficacy as being significant within an educational framework because of the need for motivated and resilient students with high levels of academic accomplishment, both individually and collectively.

Self-efficacy in education

Upon conception, self-efficacy was related to many different areas in which its influence could be considered prevalent, such as sports and education (Bandura, 1997). The influence of self-efficacy in education appears to be considerable and some researchers go as far as stating that ‘self-efficacy has a significant role in second/foreign language learning’ (Shi, 2016, p.

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463). One of the main contributions of self-efficacy to second language learning is providing students with opportunities to self-regulate their learning and motivation. Self regulation in an educational context has been found to influence how: ‘students regulate the motivational, affective, cognitive and social determinants of their academic and intellectual output (Zimmerman, 1990; Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994 in Bandura, 1997). It has been put forth that many factors interact and contribute towards students’ performance and achievement, but especially self-efficacy due to its suggested positive influence on performance, student

motivation and tenacity in difficult situations (Bandura, 1997; Prat-Sala & Redford, 2012). The educational influence of self and collective efficacy has been the main focus of numerous studies and the results of these studies generally indicate that the supposed benefits of a higher sense of efficacy are apparent in the contemporary classroom (Pescosolido, 2001; Goddard, Logerfo & Hoy, 2004; Williams & Williams, 2010; Prat-Sala and Redford, 2012; Sekreter, 2016; Shi, 2016; Leeming, 2017; Batenburg et al., 2019) and that there seems to be a direct negative correlation between students’ self-efficacy beliefs and foreign language

anxiety (Torres & Turner, 2016; Fallah, 2017). Fallah (2017) observed ‘that self-efficacy beliefs affect the amount of anxiety individuals suffer as they engage in a task’ (p. 752) while Torres and Turner (2016) researched the influence of foreign language anxiety on

self-efficacy beliefs, and vice versa, in foreign language skill tasks among two hundred students. The results of these studies suggest that there was a strong negative correlation between language anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs and that self-efficacy beliefs differ among different foreign language skills.

A different approach to the influence of perceived self-efficacy in education concerns Goddard et al., (2004) who researched the relation between perceived collective-efficacy and passing mandatory assessments of achievement in school. This research was focussed on a possible relation between the perceived collective-efficacy of both students and teachers while

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focussing on the subsequent success in teaching students effectively to pass mandatory state exams. Goddard et al., (2004) gathered data through the Collective-Efficacy Belief Scale (CES) which was adapted to analyse teachers on a schoolwide level among multiple schools. The results of this study suggest that there seems to be a correlation between teacher self-efficacy and teaching students effectively. In this study, differences in teacher collective-efficacy accurately determined teacher willingness in actively trying to increase student achievement and differences in achievement across schools (Goddard et al., 2004) while student collective-efficacy turned out to be ‘predictive of student performance across all content areas tested by the state’ (Goddard et al., 2004, p. 403). Furthermore, it has been found that setting consecutive and achievable short-term goals that span a few days or weeks increased both teacher and student efficacy. For these goals to be effective for increasing efficacy they should be set within the framework of long-term goals to achieve the desired results while providing the teachers and students with mastery experience (Goddard et al., 2004). According to Bandura, mastery experience represents the strongest source of efficacy since past experiences of success or failure have been found to heavily influence future efficacy because: ‘a small performance success that persuades individuals they have what it takes to succeed often enables them to go well beyond their immediate performance

attainment to higher accomplishments and even to succeed at new activities in new settings’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 81). By providing students with this sense of success, as suggested by Bandura (1997), students could influence their own perceived self-efficacy while surpassing their previous achievements in school. However, could this influence on self-efficacy be fostered by using the generally higher sense of perceived collective-efficacy through collaboration?

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Collaborative reading

Collaborative reading allows students to interact with one another while engaging in reading tasks. Collaborative reading is based on the notion of collaborative learning which has been suggested to foster effective learning through the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky (1978) argued that ‘the actual developmental level characterizes mental

development retrospectively, while the zone of proximal development characterizes mental development prospectively’ (p. 86–87). Students seem to develop more effectively in the social context of a group and Bandura (1997) elaborated on this, suggesting that students learn effectively in a social setting while simultaneously assessing and altering their future self-efficacy. This process of working, reading and thus learning together is significant because:

Cooperative structures [in the classroom], in which members encourage and teach one another, generally promote more positive self-evaluation and higher performance attainments than do competitive or individualistic ones (Johnson, Maruyama, Johnson, Nelson & Skon, 1981 in Bandura 1997; Ames 1984; Bandura, 1997). Less talented members fare much better in successful cooperative systems than in competitive ones. They judge themselves more capable, they feel more deserving of recognition, and they are more self-satisfied while skilled performers evaluate themselves just as positively in cooperative systems as they do in competitive systems (Bandura, 1997, p. 175).

Working structures with a collaborative focus have been regarded as being highly beneficial for increasing self-efficacy and academic achievement, especially for less talented students. The weaker students can be stimulated, and their feelings of efficacy possibly bolstered, while skilled students experience no significant drawbacks from this learning structure because they generally fare well in different types of learning structures.

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Besides these collective benefits of collaborative learning, there are several other personal benefits according to Laal and Ghodsi (2012) who claim that working

collaboratively leads to: ‘higher achievement and greater productivity, more caring,

supportive, and committed relationships; and greater psychological health, social competence, and self esteem’ (Laal & Ghodsi, 2012, p. 489). Moreover, these benefits can be fostered in any well executed collaborative process, even with collaborative foreign language skill work such as collaborative reading. Collaborative reading, which is collaborative learning in a specific setting, is the term given to a type of reading in which students tackle a text together with a common goal and shared thought process. Students take on the presented reading tasks collectively (the term collaborative reading shall be used throughout the rest of this study) and the attainment of the set goals depends on ‘all individuals cognitively contributing to the task’ (Moeken et al., 2015, p. 11). Collaborative reading has been shown to positively contribute to the reading proficiency of students, but other notable benefits, as mentioned, are an increased productivity and motivation (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Laal & Ghodsi, 2012). These

increases in productivity and motivation have been found to be most effectively fostered in small groups which stimulate active participation and active discussions while students justify their choices and strategies (Moeken et al., 2015) with as little input from the teacher as possible.

Collaborative learning and reading can consist of ‘both peer-interaction and teacher-student interaction which are the basic ingredients that support the learning process’ (Serrano & Pons, 2014, p. 782). If this collaborative process is well structured by the teacher then a proper environment for learning can be subsequently established. It has been suggested that if executed correctly then:

cooperation, in a broad sense, is one of the keys for the improvement in social

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progress is the capacity that the individual has to put their intelligence at the disposal of a collective in search of a common objective (Serrano & Pons, 2014, p. 783).

The individual has to put their intelligence at the disposal of a group to achieve certain common objectives or goals. As mentioned earlier, collective-efficacy is generally perceived to be higher than perceived self-efficacy, which is why the collective-efficacy of students might be most effectively fostered in groups to attain the aforementioned benefits of both collaborative learning and setting common goals. Research has shown that collective-efficacy is applicable to both the entire classroom and to small groups (Leeming, 2017) which reduces the need for traditional teacher-student interaction and increases the need for ‘peer-interaction [as] the basic ingredients that support the learning process’ (Serrano & Pons, 2014, p. 782). However, someone besides the teacher has to ensure that groups of students remain

productive while collaborating: a group leader. Group leaders and their role in a group

Assigning a group leader to a group helps structuring the collaborative process while also instilling confidence in other students if they meet certain criteria. The first and foremost criterium is that group leaders are students with the highest perceived competence or self-efficacy. It has been suggested that these proficient group leaders are able to act as so-called mastery or adept models which the other students attempt to emulate. These models:

‘may voice hopeful determination and the conviction that problems are surmountable and valued goals achievable’ […] ‘models who express confidence in the face of difficulties instil a higher sense of efficacy and perseverance in others than do models who doubt themselves as they encounter problems’ (Zimmerman & Ringle, 1981 in Bandura, 1997).

These group leaders have been found to serve as models for weaker students while simultaneously motivating and guiding a group to accomplish sub-goals in order to finish

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tasks set by the teacher. If groups actively work together to achieve set sub-goals and main goals through continuous discussion then the student are provided with another type of model, a ‘coping model’. Discussing findings among each other allows ‘observers who are unsure of themselves […] to regard coping models as more similar to themselves as mastery ones’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 87-88). Students who serve as coping models for other students usually experience as much difficulty as weaker students and they are considered to be as beneficial to student self-efficacy as adept models. These coping models while working on an

assignment ‘show them (the students) gains achieved through perseverant effort’, which can reduce the negative impact of failures (Bandura, 1997, p. 88). It has been shown that by providing students with these two different types of models that they can reach higher levels of perseverance and self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1997) than when they collaborate without these models. Furthermore, these models are not the only variables that instil higher levels of perseverance and self-efficacy.

The use of a group leader who sets specific sub-goals per group has been found to be beneficial for students for several reasons, besides them being mastery models. Leeming (2017) argued that ‘by providing students with experiences of success in the language

classroom and setting achievable goals, we can develop strong feelings of collective-efficacy, which are essential if students are to invest the time and effort necessary to succeed in

learning a foreign language’ (p. 12). Sub-goals are more effective in providing feelings of success than a single main goal. These feelings of success, otherwise known as mastery experience, has been argued to be highly advantageous for perceived efficacy (Bandura, 1997) and they could positively contribute to the wish to master certain goals and to learn from them: mastery goal orientation. Sekreter (2016) stated that ‘strengthening positive thoughts through emotional skills increases students’ motivation to study, and pulls them toward their goals of performing the task successfully’ (p. 99). These emotional skills are

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applied to harnessing feelings of ‘joy, contentment, acceptance, trust and satisfaction’ (Sekreter, 2016, p. 98) to bolster the students’ desire to attain goals and improve themselves by attaining these goals. Providing students with feelings of goal attainment and satisfaction could, in turn, allow for several opportunities of success to increase the students’ mastery experience in order to ‘create a strong sense of efficacy’ (Sekreter, 2016, p. 102).

Besides providing the students with these feelings of success, it has been found that groups of students benefit from actively collaborating to achieve all of their goals while discussing the results of their labour with their group members. Ebbens and Ettekoven (2015) argued that these discussions are beneficial because of the need to actively process which approaches were used to reach certain answers after which constructive feedback could be given by the group members. This approach towards collaboration has been shown to stimulate effective collaboration because every student has to contribute towards goal attainment to reach an answer or main goal within a given timeframe. The students are

mutually dependent on one another, which is useful for effective learning and goal attainment. This feeling of mutual dependency can be further strengthened by group leaders who assign roles to the students which, subsequently, results in the stimulation of ‘successful goal attainment and effective learning’ (Ebbens & Ettekoven, 2015, p. 128).

However, groups of students can deviate from assignments for numerous reasons which is why the teacher is required to act as a monitor while the groups and group leaders work on an assignment. In this context, the teacher is fulfilling the role of a community organizer (Putney & Broughton, 2011). Putney and Broughton (2011) argued that:

From a Vygotskian perspective, development is not a phased phenomenon but rather a dynamic and reciprocal process in which individuals utilize thoughts and ideas placed into the intersubjective space through interactive classroom activities, thus making personal sense through interactions with others. Through her (the teacher’s) role as

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community organizer, the teacher paved the way for the social and academic interplay among students of various skill levels. Over time their interactions resulted in a shared sense of efficacy across the different learning activities (p. 102).

As suggested, if a teacher were to take on the role of community organizer, then proper groupwork will be stimulated. Putney & Broughton (2011) provided several tips for teachers to become community organizers based on the works of Bandura (1997) and Vygotsky (1978). The most significant tips for the teacher concern: ‘(a) creating a sense of belonging, (b) setting and working toward personal and academic goal attainment, (c) taking

responsibility for self and others’ learning, and (d) believing in individual and collective capabilities’ (p. 103). The first and final tips are directly related to one of Bandura’s main influences of efficacy, verbal persuasion, which posits the role of the teacher as a possibly significant one for student self-efficacy. Verbal persuasion has been proposed to be an effective influence of future efficacy because ‘it is easier to sustain a sense of efficacy, especially when struggling with difficulties, if significant others express faith in one’s capabilities’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 101). Thus, by performing the role of community organizer, the teacher does not only stimulate effective learning, but they might foster an increased sense of self and collective efficacy among students while the group leaders provide the students with the similarly beneficial mastery experience.

However, research has shown that a group leader’s influence on their peers diminishes over time (Pescosolido, 2001). This reduced influence is considered to be beneficial because the group members lack initial context to base their perceived self-efficacy on. The informal leader can take advantage of this ambiguity to shape opinions about performance

expectations, capabilities, and the potential external factors that the team might encounter during the first moments of collaboration (Pescosolido, 2001). Following this initial stage:

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the group members receive more and more contextual information that allows them to feel that they are making more accurate assessments about their performance, their goals, and the externalities that they will be facing. This greater amount of information leads to an increase in group members’ confidence in their own expectations and consequently a reduction in the influence of the group leader in terms of efficacy, goals, and expectations (Pescosolido, 2001, p. 88).

This diminishing influence has been perceived to be highly beneficial to individual group members and this approach to collaborative reading seems to be the most beneficial for individual group members with a lower self-efficacy, which could result in a change in their future self-efficacy. The future self-efficacy of students has been shown to develop due to the influence of the group leader on the self-efficacy of students, as mentioned by Pescosolido (2001), and the generally higher sense of collective-efficacy already present in the group prior to the diminishing influence of the group leader.

These aforementioned benefits of working and learning collaboratively, combined with the benefits of the use of a group leader, fostering the collective-efficacy and providing students with multiple sources of self-efficacy through mastery experience and verbal persuasion could result in an effect on student self-efficacy through collaborative reading.

Research question

This study examines the possibility of transfer between a students’ perceived collective-efficacy and self-collective-efficacy through several (digital) collaborative reading sessions in small groups led by a group leader. The incorporation of these components leads to the following research question:

To what extent does collaborative reading in a digital environment affect student self-efficacy in L2 reading?

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This question and the implications of this case-study were researched during several collaborative reading sessions. These sessions were designed to measure if collaborative reading and a higher sense of collective-efficacy influence the self-efficacy of students and what the extent of this effect is. The collaborative reading sessions were constructed

according to the following design hypothesis which was developed to encapsulate the focus and possible outcome of these reading sessions:

If students read collaboratively with the help of a group leader while fostering a higher sense of collective-efficacy for an extended period of time, then there could be an effect on the students’ reading self-efficacy.

The cornerstones of this design hypothesis are the use of collaborative reading and a group leader assigned to each group. These cornerstones were integrated in two design principles which had been constructed according to the findings of previously presented research.

Subsequently, the intervention used in this research was constructed according to these design principles.

Task design: the intervention

The main design principle according to which the design hypothesis was constructed was based on the previously suggested connection between collaboration and efficacy while the other design principle was constructed to exemplify the possible effect a group leader might have on student self-efficacy.

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Working collaboratively is the main design principle of the design hypothesis. It has been suggested that working collaboratively leads to higher achievement levels, greater productivity […] and self esteem (Laal & Ghodsi, 2012). The development of these benefits was facilitated by increasing mutual dependency and setting sub-goals in the collaborative reading sessions since these variables are

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considered to be the main influences on active and effective collaboration (Ebbens & Ettekoven, 2015). The participating students are to be closely monitored

(Ebbens & Ettekoven, 2015; Serrano & Pons, 2014) in order to maintain an effective collaborative process while stimulating effective learning and successful goal attainment. Furthermore, the groups are to be heterogeneously constructed consisting of students with differing self-efficacy beliefs to promote the influence of a higher sense of collective-efficacy and collaboration on self-efficacy. This type of group construction has been found to facilitate the effectivity of coping models over their group members which is suggested to result in an increase in the group’s perseverance and to ‘reduce the negative impact of failures’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 88).

2. The use of an appointed group leader to structure the collaborative reading sessions is the second design principle of this research. These group leaders have been found to function as mastery models who instil a higher sense of efficacy and perseverance in others (Zimmerman & Ringle, 1981 in Bandura, 1997). One of the main requirements for a suitable group leader is that they have to be the student of with the highest perceived self-efficacy, which is one of the requirements for an effective mastery model (Bandura, 1997). Furthermore, the group leaders have to be informed prior to the start of the research to set sub-goals while working on assignments, as suggested, to provide their peers with mastery experience (Leeming, 2017) in order to stimulate the development of a higher sense of self-efficacy. Furthermore, it has been shown that sufficient mastery experience

promotes the development of a higher sense of mastery goal orientation which also facilitates the development of ‘a strong sense of self-efficacy’ (Sekreter, 2016, p. 102).

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The aforementioned requirements for the effective implementation of these design principles were carefully incorporated into the constructed intervention to ensure that the students would receive maximum exposure to the influences required to affect their perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). The design principles have been incorporated into this study while the participating students were not notified of them or the main subject of study. The students remained uninformed to avoid the influence knowledge on the research subject could have on the results of this study. The students’ goal, as far as they were concerned, involved:

• practicing with collaborative reading to improve their discussion and reading skills (Appendix 3).

While my first goals as researcher were to:

• determine the student efficacy to deduce if the average student collective-efficacy was higher than their average self-collective-efficacy.

• And to introduce the students to collaborative reading during the first session to ensure that they knew what was expected of them during the remainder of the collaborative reading sessions.

When the collective-efficacy starting requirement was met and the students knew what was expected of them, the goal during the subsequent collaborative reading sessions became:

• ensuring that the students collaborated as required to ensure the optimal environment for collaborative reading.

The details of the reading sessions will now be discussed to exemplify how the design principles have been implemented and how the lessons were constructed.

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Methodology

Participants and setting

This study is a case-study with a focus on the possible effect of an intervention performed in a computer-mediated classroom environment. This digital setting had been implemented due to the Covid-19 outbreak and the inability to perform this study in a traditional classroom setting. The use of chat as a medium for collaboration was implemented into this research due to its synchronous nature of communication (Smith, 2016), similarly to face-to-face

communication.

The group of participating students consisted of nineteen fourth grade pre-university level students (N = 19). Eighteen of these students were native Dutch speakers with English as their L2 and one Thai student who similarly has English as their L2. This group was chosen

because they were the reason to research this subject. During class, several students would indicate that the set reading assignments were more difficult than those in their previous year. Several students did not expect that they would complete the set assignment successfully and their voiced distress was the main incentive to research if an intervention could be constructed to affect the students’ reading self-efficacy.

The intervention

This study was conducted over the course of several weeks during Spring. The entire intervention was specifically constructed to ensure that multiple moments of data collection could be incorporated:

1. Preceding the collaborative reading sessions, the students were required to participate in an individual reading session. The students were provided with two texts after which they had to fill out a self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 5) focussed on reading self-efficacy.

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2. According to the results of this questionnaire five group leaders were assigned to groups of two or three students. Mails containing instructions for the collaborative reading sessions (Appendix 4) were subsequently sent to both the group leaders and remaining students after the groups had been formed.

3. When the groups had been constructed the students were requested to gather in the digital classroom created in Microsoft Teams. After receiving instructions, the students had to read collaboratively on two reading texts after which they had to fill out a questionnaire designed to measure their reading collective-efficacy (Appendix 6). Some students were sent additional questions by mail (Appendix 8) after the first collaborative reading session to elucidate on their collaborative process and on answers they had given in their collective-efficacy questionnaires. 4. The students had to participate in three collaborative reading sessions following

the first session. The collective-efficacy questionnaire was replaced by a third collaborative reading text and assignment.

5. When the collaborative reading sessions had been concluded the students

participated in one final individual reading session. The students were once again provided with two reading texts and a slightly altered self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 7). After analysing the results, several students were selected and subsequently sent additional questions by mail (Appendix 9) to deduce if the collaborative reading sessions were perceived to be useful and to further clarify on any answers the students had given in their questionnaires.

When the collaborative and individual reading sessions had been concluded the results of the questionnaires and additional questions were analysed and compared to determine the

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Procedures

Alternatively to the classroom and classroom activities, the students worked

collaboratively in Microsoft Teams because of the possibility to create separate discussion channels that would allow for teacher supervision and data collection. The class was divided up into five groups and these groups were assigned a number which corresponded with a numbered discussion sub-channel in Microsoft Teams. These channels would then allow for private chatting during the collaborative reading sessions while I was able to monitor the students’ progress as admin of the sub-channels. An overarching Teams channel provided the possibility to convey general instructions and tips to the entire class simultaneously as

opposed to providing instructions in every individual discussion channel.

This research took place over a period of eight weeks and the collaborative reading sessions were conducted over the course of four weeks lasting fifty minutes per session; the duration of a single lesson. The students worked from home on their own computer for the entire duration of the research and according to their pre-Covid-19 curriculum. The students’ answers to the texts and answers to the questionnaires were collected in Magister throughout the duration of this research while the collaboration data from Microsoft Teams was being collected by the programme which could be accessed whenever information was needed on the groups’ collaborative process. However, the individual reading sessions were constructed differently.

The individual reading sessions

Prior to and following the intervention the students participated in two individual reading assignment while they were being monitored through their webcams to ensure that they were working individually. The document the students received contained two texts with questions, a questionnaire and a front-page containing instructions. The instructions the students

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while reading. These instructions were added to ensure that the students would complete the assignment in a desired way which enabled them to answer the self-efficacy questionnaires (Appendix 5 and Appendix 7) in their entirety.

The texts the students received were of CEFR B2 level which corresponded with their average level of B1/B2 (ERK, 2013) in the fourth grade of pre-university education.

Appropriate texts of this level were chosen based on their length and the amount of questions per text to ensure that two texts and a questionnaire would keep the students at work for the duration of a single lesson. After the students had received their first assignments, they received a brief explanation about the individual focus of the first and final reading sessions and the collaborative focus of the other reading sessions. The goal of the first lesson was:

• to determine the student reading self-efficacy with the use of the first self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 5).

The goal of this lesson was evaluated by analysing the results of the first self-efficacy

questionnaire. These results were subsequently analysed in order to appoint the group leaders and determine the composition of the groups. The goal of the final individual reading session differed, namely:

• To collect the data from a final self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 7) in conditions closely resembling the first individual reading session to determine if the student self-efficacy had been affected by the collaborative reading sessions.

The final self-efficacy questionnaire the students were provided with was nearly identical to the first self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 5 and Appendix 7) and these self-efficacy questionnaires were used to measure the students’ perceived self-efficacy. The evaluation of the goal consisted of a comparison between the data from the first self-efficacy questionnaire and the final self-efficacy questionnaire.

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The questionnaires contained four statements which the students had to assess with a number ranging from 1; strongly disagree, to 5; strongly agree. These statements concerned the students’ perceived self-efficacy while performing certain reading activities, including: identifying the key points in the text, taking notes, answering questions to the text without doubt and choosing appropriate reading strategies for the text and questions. Two text-specific questions were added which the students were allowed to skip if they were considered to be too difficult. These questions were included to reflect the students’ self-efficacy and resilience in the face of difficulty. The self-efficacy of the students was subsequently determined by calculating their average self-efficacy scores based on the four self-efficacy statements and the amount of answers the students had given to the text-specific questions. The results from the final self-efficacy questionnaire would be supplemented with data from several additional questions sent to certain students ensuing the final reading session (Appendix 9). These questions, for example, evaluated the students’ perceived benefits of the group leaders, changes in the students’ self-confidence while reading and changes in the students’ reading proficiency.

The collaborative reading sessions

The results of the first self-efficacy questionnaire were analysed by calculating every students’ average self-efficacy measured across two texts. The five students who indicated having the highest perceived self-efficacy were appointed as group leaders after which two students with an average and one student with a low self-efficacy score were assigned to a group leader. The students were appointed to a group leader they were familiar with to ensure that the students felt at ease within their respective groups.

The group leaders and other students were informed by mail (Appendix 3 and Appendix 4a) to engage their provided texts collaboratively while following the instructions of their group leaders. Strategies the group leaders could employ during the reading sessions included:

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assigning roles to students for particular questions or activities and, most importantly, setting sub-goals during the intervention in order to complete the provided assignments in an

effective and well-structed manner. The group leaders received further clarification on their role as leader in an email (Appendix 4b) preceding the second collaborative reading session while also receiving the answers to the previous assignment. The group leaders received the answers to the collaborative reading assignments after each collaborative reading session which allowed them to adapt their collaborative approaches if necessary.

The groups were closely monitored to ensure that every student participated as required while the students worked towards their goals. This was the teacher’s focus during the collaborative reading sessions while the students were engaging in their provided assignments. The students were provided with an overarching goal for the collaborative reading sessions, which concerned:

• Reading collaboratively, discussing answers and discussing approaches to the texts to improve the students’ discussion and reading skills.

This goal was implemented to ensure that the students had a final goal and subsequent incentive to participate in the collaborative reading sessions while I refrained from informing the students of the actual goals of the intervention. The actual main goals of the collaborative reading sessions differ. The first collaborative reading session had two aforementioned main goals, namely:

• To introduce the students to collaborative reading during the first session to ensure that they knew what was expected of them during the remainder of the collaborative reading sessions.

• And to measure the student collective-efficacy in this collaborative reading session to deduce if one of the starting requirements of this research was met.

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The first goal was evaluated in the second collaborative reading session in which the students’ opinions on their preparation for the reading sessions was evaluated. The second goal was evaluated by analysing the results of the collective-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 6) that the students were provided with following the first collaborative reading session. This was the final questionnaire for the duration of the collaborative reading sessions and its statements were similar to those of the self-efficacy questionnaire, but with a collaborative focus. The students had to activate their webcams while filling out of the questionnaire to ensure every student was working individually to determine which possible benefits and constraints the students experienced while collaborating. Some students were sent additional questions by mail (Appendix 8) which focussed on the collaborative process. These questions concerned: what the students did while collaborating, the perceived possible contribution collaborative reading could have to their reading proficiency and an assessment of the usefulness of a group leader. These questions were added to provide this study with additional data. The following section has been constructed to exemplify how the aforementioned data of this case study was collected, what choices were made in the data collection process, what kind of data was collected and how the data was analysed.

Data collection

The self-efficacy questionnaires

The data collection was focussed on the perceived self-efficacy of the students. The data was gathered by using an adapted questionnaire (Appendix 5) which focussed on the perceived self-efficacy of students in reading tasks. The questionnaire on which most of the questions were based had been constructed by Prat-Sala and Redford (2010) which concerned the reading self-efficacy of university students. This questionnaire was altered to reflect the reading self-efficacy of students in their fourth year of pre-university education by deleting several metacognitive questions from the original questionnaire. The remaining questions

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concerned student self-efficacy in understanding the text, answering questions, taking notes and using reading strategies. These elements are regarded to be important in high-school reading assignments by foreign language teachers at my school which is why these questions were adapted for the self-efficacy questionnaire.

A five-point Likert scale was added to aid with decoding the quantative data while a short explanation was requested after every question of the questionnaire for qualitative data to be gathered. The self-efficacy questionnaire consisted of four self-efficacy related

statements and two text specific questions per provided text. These text specific questions were carefully constructed to further clarify the perceived self-efficacy of students because answering was not compulsory, which could correspond with a lower self-efficacy. This questionnaire was used to map the starting situation of the class and the need for an

intervention concerning the students’ perceived reading self-efficacy. The questionnaire was provided to the students in Microsoft Teams at the start of the individual reading session and the collected data was anonymized. However, the questionnaires themselves were not

anonymized to ensure that the teacher had insight into the self-efficacy of every student which allowed for a better and easier group composing process.

The final self-efficacy questionnaire was nearly identical to the first self-efficacy questionnaire apart from the text specific questions that were altered to reflect the information in the new texts the students were provided with. The data of the final self-efficacy

questionnaire would be compared to the data of the first self-efficacy questionnaire to deduce if variations in self-efficacy assessment had occurred amongst the students and amongst the questions.

The collective-efficacy questionnaire

The perceived collective-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 6) was filled out at the end of the first collaborative reading session. The function of this questionnaire was to map the

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collective-efficacy of the students to deduce if the collective-efficacy was generally perceived to be higher than the students’ self-efficacy. A higher collective-efficacy was one of the most significant requirements for this research to be feasible due to the possible effect it could have on student self-efficacy. The collective-efficacy questionnaire was constructed in a similar fashion to the self-efficacy questionnaire with minimal alterations that reflected the

collaborative focus of the collective-efficacy questionnaire. Furthermore, the students had to assess if they would have done as well individually as in a group after which they were requested to describe their collaborative process. These questions were added to reflect the individual students’ views on the collaborative process. Besides these questions, one text specific question was added to elucidate the students’ resilience in the face of difficulty after collaborating for one lesson.

Further information on the decision-making process of data collection

Interviews were not implemented into this research due to the personal and

psychological nature of the data. However, several students were approached by the teacher with a few additional questions concerning their answers in either the collective-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 8) or the final self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 9). The students were chosen based on their remarkably low or high efficacy scores, because of surprising differences or similarities between their answers and assessments in the questionnaires or because of the brevity of their answers in the questionnaires. The questions in the follow-up mail of the collective-efficacy questionnaire concerned the nature of the group collaboration, the perceived benefit of the use of a group leader and the perceived benefit of collaborative reading with regard to their own reading proficiency. The questions in the follow-up mail of the final self-efficacy questionnaire concerned the students’ perceived usefulness of the collaborative reading sessions, the students’ self-confidence while reading, the possible

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influence the collaborative reading sessions had on the students’ self-confidence and if the students perceived the use of a group leader useful.

Data

The collected data consists of several hours’ worth of chat, ten student responses to additional questions received by mail and the students’ assessment of efficacy in:

• The first self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 5) • The collective-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 6) • The final self-efficacy questionnaire (Appendix 7)

The results of the questionnaires consist of a perceived grade on a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5 with an included explanatory answer per question. Some students did not provide an explanation for every question, but most students did provide explanations.

Data analysis

The information presented below has been categorized per questionnaire because of the differences in analyses of the results.

The first self-efficacy questionnaire

The aforementioned data from the first self-efficacy questionnaire was analysed by hand in Microsoft Excel. The students’ assigned self-efficacy scores were inserted into an Excel sheet after which their average scores would be calculated by the programme. After the results of the first self-efficacy questionnaire had been categorized the students were assigned to a group which eventually included a group leader who indicated having an average self-efficacy surpassing 3.76, one or two students with an average self-self-efficacy between 3 and 3.75 and one student with an average self-efficacy significantly below 3 or two students with a self-efficacy marginally below 3.

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The collective-efficacy questionnaire

The results of the collective-efficacy questionnaire were inserted in Microsoft excel similarly to the results of the self-efficacy questionnaire. This initial set of data was analysed by comparing the results from the first self-efficacy questionnaire and the collective-efficacy questionnaire. The results of these questionnaires were compared by hand and a comparative analysis was used to determine if the collective-efficacy was assessed to be higher than the initial student self-efficacy and if there were any significant differences in student assessment on particular components from the questionnaires. These results were then bolstered by claims made by students during their collaborative reading sessions in the chat, the explanations they had given in their questionnaires and the answers five students had given to the additional questions (Appendix 8).

The final self-efficacy questionnaire

The results of the final self-efficacy questionnaire were similarly calculated in Microsoft Excel after which the scores of the first and the final self-efficacy questionnaire were comparatively analysed. The group leaders were both included and excluded in average class scores to determine how much their usually high and stable self and collective efficacy scores influenced the percentage of overall self-efficacy change amongst students.

Furthermore, every discrepancy in individual student self-efficacy score, questionnaire component score and class average self-efficacy score was noted after which several

additional questions were formulated (Appendix 9). The results of this comparative analysis were bolstered by the data provided by the students during the collaborative reading sessions, the answers to their questionnaires and with the answers five students had given to the

additional questions. These students were chosen because of either a significant change in their self-efficacy score or their virtually unchanged self-efficacy scores to determine possible causes for these results. The results will now be presented corresponding to the previously

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mentioned order of the three questionnaires to provide a chronological and unambiguous overview of the results.

Results

Results of the first self-efficacy questionnaire

The results of the first questionnaire are based on a five-point Likert scale and the numbers 1 through 5 shall be used to describe the self-efficacy of students because of the use of decimal points. On the five-point Likert scale a 5 is to be considered a high perceived self-efficacy while 1 is to be considered a low perceived self-self-efficacy. Most students assessed their own self-efficacy with an average score, ranging from 2.5 to 3.75 on the four self-efficacy questions. These questions concern, in order: having no trouble to identify key points in the texts, answering questions to the texts without doubt, easily making comprehensive notes to the text and easily applying different reading strategies whenever necessary. Table 1 and 2 provide a brief overview of the general results (Appendix 10) with an inclusion of the average assessment per individual question including the average amount of answers to the text

specific questions. The average class self-efficacy including and excluding the group leaders was also included to indicate the difference between scores when the five highest scoring students, who later set out to support the other students, are not regarded.

Table 1.

Average self-efficacy assessment per question and the class average of the first text Questions Key

points

Questions Notes Reading strategies Text specific 1 answers Text specific 2 answers Class average Class average − leaders Average scores 3.53 3.47 3.58 4 12 16 3.64 3.48

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Table 2.

Average self-efficacy assessment per question and the class average of the second text Questions Key

points

Questions Notes Reading strategies Text specific 1 answers Text specific 2 answers Class average Class average − leaders Average scores 3 2.63 3.26 3.58 7 6 3.12 2.7

The first text the students were provided with was indicated to be relatively easy by the students and the second text was considered to be quite difficult, which is why the results are presented separately. This perceived difference in difficulty is reflected by the average self-efficacy of the students with the first text receiving a class average of 3.64 and the second text receiving a class average of 3.12. When the highest scoring students, the group leaders, are excluded from the class average the difference in perceived difficulty is further

exemplified with a decrease in average score of 4.4% for the first text and 13.5% for the second text. This difference in perceived difficulty also becomes apparent when the amount of answers to the text specific questions are regarded: twelve students answered the first text specific question and sixteen students answered the second question while on the second text seven students answered the first text specific question and six students answered the second question. This is a 53.6% decrease in answers to the text specific questions.

Collectively, the students’ self-efficacy concerning reading strategies scored a 4 on the first text and a 3.57 on the second text, making it the highest scoring reading self-efficacy component in the questionnaire. The lowest scoring component is answering questions to the text without doubt, scoring a 3.47 on the first text and a 2.6 on the second text. Nearly every student indicated that they had been in doubt about several questions which, according to several students, is why they attributed lower scores to this component. The students scored taking notes as the second highest reading self-efficacy component with a 3.57 on the first text and a 3.26 on the second text. Most students indicated not having too much trouble with

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this component because of instructions on note taking earlier that year. The final reading self-efficacy component was identifying key points in the text which scored a 3.47 on the first text and a 3 on the second text, making it the second lowest scoring component.

Two students, who averagely assessed themselves with the lowest average self-efficacy, indicated having a self-efficacy of 2.6 while the highest assessment of self-efficacy is a student averaging a score of 4.5. The rest of the self-efficacy scores are situated between 2.6 and 4.5 with a class average across both texts of 3.4. The class average decreases by 8.3% when the group leaders are not regarded. This difference exemplifies the influence of the group leaders on the class average. Now that the scores pertaining to the questions have been presented, the students’ assessments of their self-efficacy will be categorised and discussed. An overview of this categorisation is reported in Table 3.

Table 3.

General overview of self-efficacy scores among students.

Self-efficacy scores Below 3 Between 3.01-3.75 Above 3.76

Number of students 8 6 5

Students with a self-efficacy score below 3

As seen above, the largest category of students are the eight students with a self-efficacy below 3 with the lowest scoring student indicating to have a self-efficacy of 2.6. A few of the lowest assessing students indicated having trouble with and uncertainty while answering questions. Most of these students also indicated having inadequate knowledge of vocabulary, more difficulty taking notes and having trouble understanding the key points of the texts. However, most students did indicate feeling able to choose adequate reading strategies while reading. One of the students in this category answered three of the four text specific questions while three of the seven students answered one or two of the four text specific questions. The

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rest of the students skipped the text specific questions and thus the average amount of answers to the text specific questions in this group is 1.57 answers per student. The students of this group generally perceived their self-efficacy to be highest when deciding on which reading strategies to use and answering questions to the text without doubt was perceived to be the most difficult component with the lowest self-efficacy score. These results could then be considered comparable to the class average self-efficacy scores.

Students with a self-efficacy score ranging from 3.01 to 3.75

Six students assessed themselves with a perceived self-efficacy ranging from 3.01 to 3.75. Four of the students from this category pointed out that they had an incomplete

vocabulary, but not an inadequate one. Furthermore, most of these students, similarly to the previous group, indicated knowing which reading strategies to use which is represented by the relatively high score this component received in comparison to the other components.

Answering the questions of the text without doubt was once again perceived to be the most difficult and lowest scoring component of the students’ self-efficacy, but identifying the key points received a similarly low score. Out of this group of students two students answered all four of the text specific questions, one student answered two of the text specific questions and two students answered one of them which results in an average amount of 1.67 answers per student.

Students with a self-efficacy score surpassing 3.76

Five students perceived their self-efficacy to be higher than 3.75 with assessments ranging from 3.875 to 4.5. These five students were assigned the role of group leader due to their high self-efficacy scores. The highest score can be ascribed to the foreign student from Thailand whose second language is English. They shall be referred to as student 10. Student 10 and student 17 indicated that they had to read quite carefully but that they did not have

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much difficulty with identifying the key points or answering the questions to the texts without doubt. Students 10 and 17 also indicated having absolutely no trouble taking notes and that choosing the reading strategies was generally easy. Students 7, 18 and 19 indicated that they did doubt while answering the questions but that it still was relatively easy. These three students had very similar answers to their questionnaires and they indicated that identifying reading strategies was most easy and that taking notes was generally doable. Student 18 did mention having some trouble with identifying the key points in the texts due to lacking specific words in their vocabulary knowledge, especially in the first text. Three of these students answered all four text specific questions and the other two students answered three of them, making this group the group with the highest answering rate of text specific questions with an average amount of 3.6 answers per student.

Results of the collective-efficacy questionnaire

The perceived collective-efficacy was measured after the first collaborative reading session which provided the students with recent material to reflect on during the answering of the questionnaire. Most students assessed their collective-efficacy to be generally higher than their self-efficacy score with most students indicating having a self-efficacy between 3 and 4. Furthermore, a higher percentage of students assessed their collective-efficacy to be between 4 and 5 when compared to the first self-efficacy questionnaire. After the results were analysed one student of each group was chosen to answer some additional questions (Appendix 8). One student was chosen due to the brevity of their answers in the questionnaire and the rest of the students were chosen based on their interesting scores. The average results of the

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Table 4.

Average assessment of student collective-efficacy on each question with included class average

Questions Key

points

Questions Notes Reading strategies Text specific average answers Class average Class average − leaders Average scores 4 4 3.42 3.87 12.5 3.79 3.66

The results indicate that the collective-efficacy of the students is generally perceived to be higher than their perceived self-efficacy with a score of 3.79 as opposed to 3.38, a deviation of 12%. This amount further diverges with more than 50% to an average

discrepancy between scores of 18.1% when the self and the collective efficacy scores of the group leaders are not regarded. The group leaders were included in the component specific calculation because of the difficulty to implement these calculations in every single

component. Furthermore, the texts are not regarded separately in this section because none of the students indicated having difficulty with a particular text.

Averagely, the first, second, eighth and ninth question; identifying the key points in the text and answering questions to the texts without doubt, received higher scores in the collective-efficacy questionnaire than in the self-efficacy questionnaire. Identifying the key points showed an average increase across both texts of 23% and answering the questions to the texts without doubt showed an average increase of 31%. The average score of the third and tenth question, which concern note taking, did not increase and remained at an average of 3.42. The fourth and eleventh question used to measure the collective-efficacy, selecting and using reading strategies, showed an increase of 2% in the collective student efficacy. Most of the aforementioned components reflect an increase in assessment of students collective-efficacy and this increase in collective-efficacy is also reflected by the text specific questions, namely the seventh and fourteenth question of the collective-efficacy questionnaire. On average, 10.25 answers were given to the text-specific questions of the self-efficacy questionnaire

The Influence of the Group on the Self: A Study on the Effect of Collective-efficacy and Digital Collaborative Reading on Self-efficacy in the Foreign Language Classroom.