Abstract
Prison education is an important aspect of adult education. The study investigated current participation in prison education, as well as previous convictions, sentence length, and the portion of sentence served as predictors of academic self-efficacy. Survey data derived from prisoners in all Norwegian prisons provided the empirical evidences for the analyses. A principal component analysis of a 40-item academic self-efficacy questionnaire revealed self-efficacy components in literacy, mathematics, ICT, and self-regulated learning. Educational participation had a positive influence on self-efficacy in both mathematics and self-regulated learning. Participants who reported no previous conviction scored higher than others did on self-efficacy in mathematics, self-regulated learning, and ICT. Furthermore, the results showed that perceived efficacy in ICT decreased with longer sentence length. Portion of sentence served was not significantly related to any of the four self-efficacy components. The findings are discussed with reference to a need for mastery experiences in prison and implications for policy and practice
Highlights
The aim of this study was to examine Norwegian prisoners’ academic self-efficacy, and ascertain the influence that current participation in education, previous convictions, sentence length, and portion of sentence served had on their academic efficacy beliefs
The academic self-efficacy scale provides a measure of five distinct domains of self-efficacy, namely reading, writing, mathematics, information and communications technology (ICT), and self-regulated learning
To reveal a simple structure of all items of the academic self-efficacy instrument, a principal component analysis (PCA) for the extraction of factors with varimax rotation was conducted on the 1,276 respondents
Summary
The aim of this study was to examine Norwegian prisoners’ academic self-efficacy, and ascertain the influence that current participation in education, previous convictions, sentence length, and portion of sentence served had on their academic efficacy beliefs. The concept of self-efficacy constitutes a conceptual structure grounded in the broader framework of Bandura’s social cognitive theory. In line with his definition, self-efficacy is a question of self-perception rather than the actual level of an individual’s efficiency (Bandura, 1986, 1997). Perceived self-efficacy takes into account the influence of both external physical and social complexities and internal cognitive processes.
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