Academic Self-Efficacy: Definition and
Conceptual Background
A person’s confidence in their ability to
organize, execute, and regulate performance in order to solve a
problem or accomplish a task at a designated level of skill and
ability. Academic self-efficacy refers to a person's conviction
that they can successfully achieve at a designated level in a
specific academic subject area.
Individuals typically select tasks and activities
in which they feel competent and avoid those in which they do
not. Students who are confident in their capability to
organize, execute, and regulate their problem-solving or task
performance at a designated level of competence are demonstrating
high self- efficacy. Self-efficacy is generally regarded as a
multidimensional construct differentiated across multiple domains
of functioning. The construct of self-efficacy helps explain
the finding that the behavior of individuals is not always
accurately predicted from their capability to accomplish a specific
task. How a person believes they will perform is often more
important. Academic self-efficacy
refers to an individual's belief (conviction) that they can
successfully achieve at a designated level on an academic task or
attain a specific academic goal (Bandura, 1997; Eccles &
Wigfield, 2002; Elias & Loomis, 2002; Gresham, 1988;
Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002a; Schunk & Pajares,
2002).
Academic self-efficacy is grounded in
self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977). According to self-
efficacy theory, self-efficacy is an “individual’s
confidence in their ability to organize and execute a given course
of action to solve a problem or accomplish a task” (Eccles
& Wigfield, 2002, p. 110). Self-efficacy theory suggests
that academic self-efficacy may vary in strength as a function of
task difficulty—some individuals may believe they are most
efficacious on difficult tasks, while others only on easier
tasks. Furthermore, self- efficacy is believed to be
situational in nature rather than being viewed as a stable trait
(Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002a). Students make reliable
differentiations between their self-efficacy judgments across
different academic domains which, collectively, form a loose
hierarchical multidimensional structure. Self- efficacy should not
be confused with self-esteem or self-
concept. Self-efficacy is a task-specific evaluation
while self-esteem and self-concept reflect more general affective
evaluations of self (Linnenbrink & Pintrich,
2002a).
Causally, self-efficacy is believed to effect
performance via the influence on task perceptions. For
example, research suggests high self-efficacy creates a feeling
calmness or serenity when approaching difficult tasks while low
self-efficacy may result in an individual perceiving a task as more
difficult than reality, which, in turn, may create anxiety, stress
and a narrower idea on how best to approach the solving of a
problem or activity (Eccles, 2005). It is further believed
that an individual's interpretation of a successfully completed
mastery experience is important to the development of high
self-efficacy as individuals use these interpretations to develop
perceptions that they then act in concert with. Research also
suggest that vicariously observing others perform tasks can
facilitate the development of self-efficacy, particularly when
individuals are uncertain regarding their abilities or specific
tasks and they perceive similar attributes with the observed
model.
Two general categories of academic expectancy
beliefs have been postulated. Academic outcome
expectations are a student’s beliefs that specific
behaviors will lead to certain outcomes (e.g., “If I do
homework my grades will improve”). Academic efficacy
expectations are a student’s beliefs in their ability to
perform the necessary behaviors to produce a certain outcome (e.g.,
“I have enough motivation to study hard for this
test”). Understanding the difference between these 2
forms of expectancy beliefs is important as “individuals can
believe that a certain behavior will produce a certain outcome
(outcome expectation), but may not believe they can perform that
behavior (efficacy expectation)” (Eccles & Wigfield,
2002, p. 111).
