An empirical exploration of self-efficacy and aspirations failure in Ethiopia

TL;DR: This article examined the level of interdependence and volatility transmission in global agricultural futures markets and found that agricultural markets are highly interrelated and there are both own and cross-varying volatility spillovers and dependence among most of the exchanges.

TL;DR: This paper found large, statistically significant impacts on years of schooling; primary, secondary, and tertiary school completion; and the probability and quality of employment from child sponsorship. But, they did not identify program effects, using an age-eligibility rule implemented when programs began.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined farmers' information needs and information search behavior, factors affecting their search behavior and their willingness to pay for information, and found that the major constraints to information access, common to all search groups, were poor reliability and timeliness.

TL;DR: In this paper, a set of simple measurement instruments, spanning several dimensions that can be aggregated via individual-specific weights, are proposed to measure individual's aspirations and their consequences on future-oriented behavior.

Abstract: • Albert Bandura was the major motivator behind social learning theory. One of the main things that he was concerned with was how cognitive factors influence development, but he confined his approach to the behavioural tradition. Bandura called his theory a social cognitive theory. Like other behaviourists, Bandura believes that cognitive development alone cannot explain changes in behaviour in childhood and he believed that learning processes are primarily responsible for children's development. However, he felt quite strongly that the cognitive abilities of the child affect learning processes. This, he feels, is especially true of the more complex types of learning. So, how does Bandura handle the child's learning? Observational Learning • The problem, Bandura left, with classical and operant conditioning is that it has great difficulty explaining how it is that children acquire new behaviours simply by watching someone else and copying them. Also, a child does not have to be reinforced herself for the behaviour to be learned, it is enough for the child to see someone else being rewarded. Neither of these can be satisfactorily explained by a type of learning (like operant conditioning) that relies on the child experiencing the direct consequences of her actions. Bandura could explain this easily by proposing a different type of learning: observational learning. Bandura claimed that children's learning is heavily reliant on observation. Who do children observe and model themselves on? Initially parents and siblings and eventually friends, teachers, sporting heroes, TV characters. .. even cartoon characters! Just about anyone will do! So, Bandura would claim that the child who has seen her parents being kind and caring, giving to charity, caring for the environment, being kind to animals, will tend to be the same. However, the child who has seen problems being faced with violence, arguments occurring, wrongdoing being punished by hitting, will tend to grow up to be more aggressive etc. They will learn violent ways of addressing the world. Grusec et al (1978) found telling children to be generous made no difference, showing generosity did make a difference though. This is evidence that " do as I say not as I do " will not work. the most powerful of these influencing factors is Reward. Bandura called this vicarious (substituted) reinforcement. What he meant is that the child observes someone else being rewarded for a particular behaviour and this affects the child in the same way as it …

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the diverse ways in which perceived selfefficacy contributes to cognitive development and functioning and find that teachers' beliefs in their personal efficacy to motivate and promote learning affect the types of learning environments they create and the level of academic progress their students achieve.

Abstract: Preprint of Chapter in D. Kahneman, E. Diener, and N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. THE PRINTED VERSION WILL DIFFER SLIGHTLY. Pleasures of the mind are different from pleasures of the body. There are two types of pleasures of the body: tonic pleasures and relief pleasures. Pleasures of the body are given by the contact senses and by the distance senses (seeing and hearing). The distance senses provide a special category of pleasure. Pleasures of the mind are not emotions; they are collections of emotions distributed over time. Some distributions of emotions over time are particularly pleasurable, such as episodes in which the peak emotion is strong and the final emotion is positive. The idea that all pleasurable stimuli share some general characteristic should be supplanted by the idea that humans have evolved domain-specific responses of attraction to stimuli. The emotions that characterize pleasures of the mind arise when expectations are violated, causing autonomic nervous system arousal and thereby triggering a search for an interpretation. Thus pleasures of the mind occur when an individual has a definite set of expectations (usually tacit) and the wherewithal to interpret the violation (usually by placing it in a narrative framework). Pleasures of the mind differ in the objects of the emotions they comprise. There is probably a small number of categories of objects of emotions that we share with other mammals. I discuss two: the unknown (giving rise to curiosity) and skill (giving rise to virtuosity); two others being nurturing and sociality. There is also a uniquely human category of objects of emotion: suffering.

TL;DR: The authors summarize 35 years of empirical research on goal-setting theory, describing the core findings of the theory, the mechanisms by which goals operate, moderators of goal effects, the relation of goals and satisfaction, and the role of goals as mediators of incentives.