Self-efficacy and self-regulation

How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

Here is the case study I had.

You have started to dread your fifth period history class.  It is made up entirely of seniors who are counting the days until graduation and seem to care very little about learning.  Most of the students are obviously members of one clique or another.  Whenever they think your back is turned, they start passing notes and text messaging.  Worse, three boys have started disrupting those engaged in learning.  No matter what you say, they laugh at the students who present their group projects to the class.  Yesterday, Tony, Jeff, and Morris started roughhousing; then all three of them refused to sit down and follow the class procedures that the classroom community agreed upon at the beginning of the year. Although you have been using a set approach to handling infractions of rules, you decide it is time to change these procedures.

Self-efficacy, as it is described in albert Bandura's social cognitive theory, is the belief in oneself's ability to succeed in a given circumstance or task. I think of a character named Tobias from my favorite show Arrested Development. Tobias is convinced that he can be a great actor, even though he is terrible. He has very high self-efficacy, but it does not help him. Arrested Development :Tobias auditions for a commercial   . Self-efficacy can be very helpful though, we all know that motivation is what makes the seemingly impossible, possible. Here's a video with a clip from one of my favorite movies Cool Hand Luke. Luke says he can eat 50 eggs, and the only way he is able to do it without giving up is by really believing it. But what about when there is no motivation? In this case study, it seems that the seniors lack motivation to pay attention. We do not really know about their self-efficacy level in the classroom. In fact they may share a very high level of self-efficacy. If it is too high, they may not think they should waste their time trying something, because they already think it would be too easy for them. I have seen this in a couple of the students that I tutor. "I don't need to read this. It's too easy. I got advanced in TCAP." Their pride actually prevents them from challenging themselves. This may be what is going on with the seniors. They need a a challenge. Something that may relate better to the seniors is self-regulation. If the students would self-regulate their behavior, perhaps they would not act out as a group as much. Even if just a couple of the students would have better self-regulation, they would have an effect on the others. The instructor would have to be able to create some kind of motivation for this to work, either intrensic or extrensic through some kind of punishment or reward. I find that the About.com section on self-efficacy was actually quite helpful at reminding me what I have learned on the subject. http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/self_efficacy.htm