Self-consciousness, self-efficiency and Peer learning

From SDT perspective

Li tai. 1 1. Wu Han university, Economic and Management School .

Wu Han City, P.R.China E-mail: tigerlee1210@yahoo.com.cn

Abstract：Peer learning is a topic in the education psychology field. From the career development and human resource development perspectives, peer learning plays an important roles in human resource manage and learning organization building. This paper focused on the relationship among self-consciousness(SC), academic self-efficiency(ASE) and peer learning(PL). By the methods of SEM and sample from college students, authors found that those cognitive psychology variables have positive influence on peer learning.

Key words: self-consciousness; self-efficiency; peer learning; SEM

I. INTRODUCTION Deci & Ryan(1985,1991)[1][2] established a theory about

how people make their need turn into fact by extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. but the base of this theory is self-consciousness, people firstly figure out themselves, then they are able to show their need and find the path to achievement by motivation or self-efficiency. The same reason is also able to explain the phenomenon of peer learning. In this paper, the path of how self-consciousness, academic self-efficiency and peer learning is discussed by author. D. Boud (1988) [3] consider that the term of “peer learning” remains abstract and it suggests a two- way, reciprocal learning activity. it should be mutually beneficial and involve the sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience between the participants. it can be described as a way of moving beyond independent to interdependent or mutual learning. D. Boud, R. Cohen, J. Sampson (2001) [4] defined peer learning as a process for aiding students in achieving particular learning outcomes. And it was full of literature (Magin, D.J, 1982; Clark, Fiona; Heller, Anita Fochs; Rafman, Carolynn; Walker, Joan, 1997; Judy M. Parr and Michael A. R. Townsend, 2002 ; Ashwin P. 2002; Xie, Bo, 2007) [5][6][7][8][9], which focused on the process of peer learning, peer learning mechanism, gender difference and so on. D. Boud (2001) thought that peer learning is a very important process for aiding students in achieving particular learning outcome. and for organization, if they want to built up learning organization, they have to help their employees to share their knowledge by peer learning.

Self-consciousness is a self variable means an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously.(Mc Gaughey, William 2001).[10] In a positive

context, self-consciousness may affect the development of identity, because it is during periods of high self-consciousness that people come the closest to knowing themselves objectively. Self-consciousness affects people in varying degrees, as some people are constantly self-monitoring or self-involved, while others are completely oblivious about themselves(Nathaniel Branden, 1969)[11]. Peer learning is one of cognitive strategy use, which a method to obtain knowledge for students.

Self-efficiency is defined as a person’s self-belief in his or her ability to perform specific tasks (Steven H. Appelbaum & Alan Hare, 1996)[12], Bandura,A. (1991) [13] consider self-efficiency as people’s beliefs about their capability to exercise control over their own level of functioning and over events that affect their lives, which is considered to be the outcome of a process of weighing, integrating, and evaluating information about one’s capabilities, and which, in turn, regulate the choices people make and the amount of effort they apply to a given task (Gist, M.E. 1987) [14]. For students, their specific tasks mainly focused on study and knowledge obtain. when they want to get some knowledge, they are able to get help from teachers, but also from their peers. Steven H. A et al (1996) pointed out that self-efficiency is mediator of goal setting and performance, which will have positive impact on performance. So, from the discussion above, author got 2 Hypothesises.

Hypothesis 1, Self-consciousness have positive influence topeer learning

Hypothesis 2, Self-eff iciency is mediator of self-consciousness and peer learning.

II. MEASUREMENT

A. Self-consciousness : To measure self-consciousness , Feningstein, Scheier,

and Buss (1975)[15] built up self-consciousness scale (SCS) which includes 3-factors, and then was revised by Burnkrant and Page in 1984[16] with result of 4-factors. this scale was translated into Chinese and tested by DTL. Shek in 1994[17]. Chan, David. W in 1996[18] ,Chang. L in 1998[19] in China. Authors select the revision of SCS which embraces 22 item and 3 subscales: Private self-consciousness(PRs),Public self-consciousness(PUs) and Social anxiety (SA).

B. Academic self-efficiency ： In order to measure this variable, author selected the

scale tested by Paul R. Pintrich and Elisabeth V. De Groot in 1990 which includes 9 items. and its value of αis 0.89.

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DOI 10.1109/ICEE.2010.261

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C. Peer learning： Authors selected the scale of peer learning from the

Manual for the Use of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) established by Paul R. Pintrich, David A. F. Smith, Teresa Garcia and Wilbert J. Mckeachie in 1991. this scales embraces 3 items and its value ofα is 0.76. All outcome measures were assessed with 7-Likert scales with anchors of 1= completely disagree and 7= completely agree.

III. SAMPLE AND DATA In order to grantee the veracity, authors used double

blind methods. Authors firstly required two Phd. candidates who finished their Master degree and dissertations in U.K and are full of experience in English writing and reading to translate the English version of SCS (revision Chang. L 1998) into Chinese. then authors revised those versions and get some difference. when met some odds in translation, authors got help from the foreign teachers and let foreign teachers explained the items to two translaters in English. after the English-Chinese translation. Authors then let two Phd. candidates translated the Chinese version into English. all this process lasted 3 months. Authors made a pre-test with 100 participants. their values of α separately are 0.73, 0.70 and 0.71 which shows great reliability. The formal questionnaires were sent to student in college at random. 480 copies were sent and 426 usable questionnaires were collected. 157 participants are male and the others are female.

IV. ANALYSIS Authors firstly copy with the Peer learning scales with

factors analysis and use the Maximum likelihood method and Varimax rotation method(Harman,1976; Anderson & Gerbing, 1988) [20][21] and two factors were got. One is named Academic Performance (AP) including :20th item,22nd item in MLSQ and the other is named Academic Confidence(AC) including: item2 ,item10 in MLSQ.

ROTATED FACTOR MATRIX(A)

The correlations of all variable is as follow :

Author secondly use Amos 17.0 to set up

SEM and the results are as follow:

And the information of model is as follow:

From the SEM analysis, author got a conclusion that, under the significant at the 0.05 level, all path has been confirmed. this shows that self-consciousness and academic self-efficiency have positive influence on peer learning. Moreover, academic self-consciousness is the mediater of self-consciousness and peer learning.

V. CONCLUSION

Although the sample is from the college students, yet there is also some clues for practice.

For individuals, they are supported to upgrade their self-efficiency and reflection which will help them to get knowledge from their colleague which will help them career development, and for organizations, they should provide the training to help employees enhance their self-efficiency.

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