Investigation of Relationship between Sources of Selfefficacy Beliefs of Secondary School Students and Some Variables

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students' opinions about the sources of self-efficacy belief and their gender, academic achievement, the grade level, Socio-Economic Status (SES), and learning style. The study was conducted on 984 secondary school students in the fall semester of the 2011-2012 academic year. The data were collected by the scale of determining sources of self-efficacy belief, the scale of learning styles, the scale of self-efficacy belief related learning and performance which is subscale of MSLQ and personel information form. The results of the study indicated that there were significant relationships between students' opinions about sources of self-efficacy related learning and performance and their gender, academic achievement, SES, the grade level, and learning style.Key WordsSources of Self-efficacy, Self-efficacy Belief, Secondary School, Academic Achievement, SES, Learning Style, Gender.One of the affective characteristics of students that mediate their cognitive and psychomotor learning processes is self-efficacy belief. Self-efficacy is the belief that individuals can control their behavior in attaining the goals that they set for themselves (Bandura, 1997).Bandura (1994) contended that four factors increase self-efficacy. Mastery experiences is past performances of students and the factor that provides the most realistic information to individuals on being able to deal with new encountered situations. While students' successful performances increase their self-efficacy beliefs, the unsuccessful performances decrease their self-efficacy beliefs. Vicarious experience is observation of students their classmates. While students' observation of their friends' successful performances increases their self-efficacy belief; observation of their failures causes them to think that they are going to be unsuccessful. According to social learning theory, students who observe models are expected to acquire their emotions. In this respect, their friends' low or high self-efficacy beliefs affect students' self-efficacy beliefs as well. Social persuasion is to inform students explicitly that they can achieve the tasks assigned by their social environment. Emotional state is perceived class environment. While class environments where students do not feel comfortable decrease their self-efficacy belief, class environments that are collaborative and support learning increase students' self-efficacy belief (Bandura, 1994).The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students' opinions about the sources of their self-efficacy beliefs and their gender, academic achievement, the grade level, SES, and their learning styles. It is necessary that we know the factors that increase self-efficacy belief to regulate educational setting accordingly. The factors affecting self-efficacy belief can vary among individuals. Identification of the most effective factors that have effects on the self-efficacy belief of students is important for teachers to organize instructional activities. So, teachers can behave to students accordingly for increasing their self-efficacy. In below, it was examined relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement, gender, SES and learning style.Academic AchievementOne of the learning outcomes is the academic achievement. Academic achievement and self-efficacy reciprocally effect each other. Self-efficacy is an important predictor of academic achievement (Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991). Likewise, academic achievement (enactive mastery experience) is the most powerful source of self-efficacy (Arslan, 2012; Bandura, 1997; Britner & Pajares, 2006; Hampton, 1998; Usher & Pajares, 2006b). The relationship between gender differences and the sources of self-efficacy have been examined in many studies. While it was found there wasn't relationship gender and the sources of self-efficacy. …