Bandura, A. (2006). Autobiography. M. G. Lindzey & W. M. Runyan (Eds.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. IX). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
It is not uncommon for Theorists often exempt themselves from the theories they develop to explain how other folks behave. The road I have traveled is very much in keeping with the agentic perspective towards human self-development, adaptation and change which underpins social cognitive theory. I grew up in Mundare, a tiny Canadian hamlet in North Alberta. In a venturesome move, my parents emigrated as teenagers from Eastern Europe, my father from Poland and my mother from Ukraine. My father worked laying track for the trans-Canada railroad, my mother worked in the general store in town. After they garnered sufficient savings they bought a homestead. Converting land manually that was heavily wooded and strewn with boulders into a tillable farm with virtually no mechanization was an arduous undertaking.
In addition to creating a workable farm, my father supervised the layout and construction of the road system in this newly opened homestead district. The beginning of this pioneer life was a tough struggle. In the first year, a layer of the thatched roof on the house my father built had to be dismantled and fed to the cattle because of a severe drought. Through laborious effort my father added further sections to the farm. Before long he was sporting a model-T Ford, an odd cultural novelty at the time.
In social cognitive theory I distinguish among three types of environments: the imposed, selected, and constructed environments. Life in this austere homestead area placed a premium on agentic capabilities to construct most of one's life environment with meager resources, and no agricultural subsidies or insurance coverage against widespread crop destruction by unmerciful hail storms, early frosts, and severe droughts. Constructionism was a vital lifestyle not an abstract psychological theory to be debated in arcane language in learned circles.
Not all was arduous labor, however. These folks worked hard in the early building of the Canadian nation but they also knew how to party. They had many saints and religious events requiring festive celebrations. My mother was a superb cook and my father played a sprightly violin. As another mark of constructional initiative, the folks in this area operated stealth liquor-distilling systems that helped to lubricate their communal festivities. This required considerable ingenuity to escape the ever vigilant Royal Canadian mounted police. For example, one innovative farmer sectioned a portion of the boiler in his steam engine for his fermented mash so he could distill the potent brew while performing the farming activities. This is a graphic early example of “multi-tasking.”
We were a close-knit family. I was the youngest with five older sisters. Our family lost a young daughter to the flu pandemic in 1918. My mother walked from home to home helping to nurse back to health those who were fortunate to survive. We also lost a son in a hunting mishap with one of his friends. The Great Depression took a toll on my father's fun-loving spirit when he lost a section of land he had cultivated so laboriously. It pained him to see somebody else farming it.
My parents had no schooling but they placed a high value on the education they missed. My father taught himself to read three languages and served as a member of the school board in the district where we lived. My parents sold a portion of the farm to purchase a dray, freight delivery business and a livery stable in Mundare to be closer to school. All of the supplies for this town were brought in by rail so our drayage service delivered the incoming supplies to the various businesses. The town had a huge mill where farmers from the region brought their grain to be milled into flour. We provided a no room-service bunkhouse, where the farmers could bed down for the night usually after an extended visit to the local beer parlor. We also operated a large livery stable where the farmers parked their horses. During the summer months my father worked on the farm and I would pitch in with the harvesting of the crops, while my mother operated the businesses in town.
The only school in town, which housed first grade through high school, was woefully short of teachers and educational resources. Because two teachers had to teach the entire high school curriculum, they tried their best but were not always fully informed in key subject areas. We once pilfered the answer book for the trigonometry course and brought it to an abrupt halt. We had to take charge of our own learning. Self-directed learning was an essential means of academic self-development not a theoretical abstraction. The paucity of educational resources turned out to be an enabling factor that has served me well rather than an insurmountable handicapping one. The content of courses is perishable, but self-regulatory skills have lasting functional value whatever the pursuit might be.