Self-processes, learning, and enabling human potential

Self-processes drive engagement in learning and underpin human potential. These self-processes include self-concept, self-regulation, self-determination, self-efficacy, well-being, resilience, and motivation. These self-processes are dynamic and interact. Indeed, it is hard to conceptualize that any of these typologies of the self are really independent, but most likely are simply different faces of the one underlying, yet complex process. Indeed, introducing Part II, Dynamic Views of the Self, Albert Bandura highlights that any conception of the self must be analyzed within the broader context of the model of human nature in which it is rooted and that while individuals have "multiple selves" these are interdependent and coordinated by the one agentic self. Furthermore, he emphasizes that to be agentic an individual has to influence intentionally one's functioning and life circumstances through four core processes: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. These processes are inherent in the other theoretical perspectives on the self covered in this volume. Building on his social cognitive theory, Bandura elaborates the origins of personal agency and its relation to identity formation and modes of agency (individual agency, proxy agency, and collective agency). He follows this by disputing a range of dualisms (e.g., individualism and collectivism, agency and communion, personal agency and social structure) that he believes have bedevilled any attempt to understand the real functioning of the self in all its complexity. In his detailed analysis Bandura also addresses ontological and epistemological issues concerning the self, its nature, and how one comes to know it. In a very thought-provoking and complex paper, Bandura highlights the key role self-efficacy plays in the agentic functioning of the self because of its impact on cognitive, motivational, affective, and decisional processes.