A Study of Galatea Effect on Goal Orientation Resilience and Mindfulness of Secondary Level Students

Abstract

newlineSelf-efficacy, for long, has been found to effectively catalyze individuals responses towards development of healthy behaviors by bringing about a change in the way with which they approach challenges, goals and tasks. Individuals with high self-efficacy recover quickly from disappointments, failures and setbacks and have a much greater sense of awareness about themselves and their surroundings. The core idea of the research was to develop Galatea Effect in terms of goal-orientation, resilience and mindfulness by enhancing the self-efficacy of the secondary level students. For the fulfillment of the requirements of the study, a Galatea Intervention Programme was developed for raising the self-efficacy of students. The programme comprised of 09 modules with 72 activities in total. Findings of the present study in a limited environment suggest that it is possible to create Galatea effect for the secondary level students in Indian circumstances, provided the researcher is keenly attentive and vigilant of the factors that might manipulate students interactions and their self-expectations. From the effects analyzed later on, it can be firmly said that the four sources and elements of self-efficacy as discussed by Bandura contribute significantly towards making students more resilient, observant, optimistic, attentive, calm, emotionally balanced, non-judgmental and being able to live in the moment and respond to events and situations in a non-reactive manner. As Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Interpreting this in the light of the present research, it can be said that if the actions and feelings, contributing towards self-efficacy in individuals are repeated over and over again, their self-efficacy gets strengthened. The Galatea Programme and activities, if standardized on a broader spectrum of population can help individuals become self-sustained and confident and can help improve their achievement, self-esteems, self-regulatory skills and self-evaluation. The exact mechanism and the proportionate contribution of the different sources of self-efficacy towards improvements in goal-orientation, resilience and mindfulness could be scrutinized to analyze which source of self-efficacy explained by Bandura contributes the maximum towards it and which the least or if such a generalization is even possible or not for a much broader sample under specific conditions.