Building Competency in Diabetes Education THE ESSENTIALS

SELF-MANAGEMENT EDUCATION & SUPPORT: PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT| 11-13

Self-efficacy • How confident is the individual that he or she can perform this behaviour? o Tool: Scale 1_________10 with 1 being not confident and 10 being very confident. • Ask what would it take to move to the next number? • What barriers are present? • What situations may be difficult? • What is the best way to learn at this time? o Tool: Learning style questionnaire Learning styles Learning style is also an important consideration in assessment, but only when the person is ready — when he or she recognizes a need to change or learn. Many people can readily identify how they are best able to learn, but others have never considered this. The educator may ask the learner to describe situations in which learning took place with more ease and how the learning was retained (23). This relates to the concept of performance mastery as described by self-efficacy theory: success breeds success . Learning can occur through visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic pathways. Other authors have referred to these pathways using the acronym VARK system: visual, auditory, reading and writing and kinesthetic (24). Kolb was an initial investigator looking at how people prefer to learn. He outlined four styles describing the characteristics of the learner and he suggested which presentation method would be best suited to each style (24-26).