Bandura's self-efficacy theory was used a model for examining levels of confidence and clinical skills among undergraduate speech pathology students. Forty-four second-year students rated their confidence in their ability to perform a number of clinical tasks at the beginning and at the end of the academic year, which was their first clinic experience. These efficacy expectations were compared with clinical supervisors' assessments of the students' performance on the same tasks. An attempt was also made to assign students to pairs and small groups for training on the basis of their initial efficacy expectations Efficacy strength (but not level) increased significantly over the year, and efficacy level (but not strength) was moderately and significantly related to clinical supervisors' ratings of clinic performance. Practical problems arose with the grouping, but the results suggested that there may be some possible benefits from assigning students to pairs on the basis of their self-efficacy. These results show self-efficacy to be only moderately well related to clinic performance, but it is suggested that relatively high baselines may have attenuated the strength of the obtained relationship. The role of self-efficacy in clinical skills training warrants further investigation.A perennial problem for the educator of clinicians, whether in speech pathology or in other fields, is the anxiety with which students view clinical placements. It is generally believed that students have very low levels of confidence and high levels of fear when first faced with the task of dealing with members of the public. This investigation looks at students' confidence and performance from the point of view of self-efficacy theory.Self-efficacy theory (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) proposes that people's expectations about their abilities to perform particular tasks largely determine the extent to which they persevere with those tasks and how successful they are with them. According to this model, people develop "efficacy expectations", highly specific beliefs about their abilities to perform certain tasks in certain situations, through a synthesis of information from a variety of sources. These sources include the subject's previous experiences with the activity and setting, his or her observations of other people's actions in similar situations, verbal information, and the person's interpretation of his or her state of physiological arousal. Information from all these sources is weighted to produce an overall "efficacy expectation".The efficacy expectation is quite specific to a particular situation and can be modified through experience or observation. This emphasis on specificity and

Because speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and teachers of the hearing-impaired have contact with parents of the hearing-impaired child, they are urged to undertake the responsibility of providing supportive counseling to these parents during the period following diagnosis of hearing impairment. Such a service requires a broader professional role than may previously have been envisioned. The authors suggest that the counseling program be aimed at both the growth of the family as a whole as well as that of the hearing-impaired child. It should promote the succession of stages that parents appear to pass through in the process of acknowledging their child's handicap. The nature of the parents' feelings, the source of their feelings, and ways in which the professional involved may deal with these feelings are discussed. Examples from the writers' clinical experience are presented.