CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature and Studies

This chapter presented some review of related literature and studies that

were relevant to the research study. The researchers divided the chapter into some

parts. The first part of this literature review consisted of the definition of self-

efficacy, an analysis of self-efficacy theory, self-efficacy and its dimensions, self-

efficacy and learning, factors affecting self-efficacy, and academic self-efficacy.

The next part was an explanation of achievement, the factors affecting learning

achievement, and the type of learning achievement. The last part of this chapter

was the writer's review of previous studies correlated with this study.

Self-Efficacy Theory. Bandura (1977) introduced the construct of self-

efficacy with the publication of the article self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of

behavioral change, and the book Social Learning Theory. Social learning theory

viewed human action or behavior as being determined by the interplay of the

situation, the person's behavior, cognition, and emotions. One of Bandura's

interests was how individuals regulated their motivation, thought patterns, affective

states, and behavior through personal and collective efficacy beliefs.

(Akhtar 2008) stated that self-efficacy was a belief in people's abilities,

specifically their ability to meet the challenges ahead of them and complete a task

successfully. General, self-efficacy was referred to as the ability to succeed, but

there were many more specific forms of self-efficacy (e.g., academic, parenting,

sports).
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(Bandura, 1997) developed his social learning theory by adding elements

such as motivation and self-regulation and, in the bottom line changing its name

to social cognitive theory. For Bandura, Barbarella, Caparra, and Pastorale (1996),

self-efficacy theory was one aspect of social cognitive theory. The latter was an

approach to understanding human cognition, action, motivation, and emotion. In

1986, Bandura added the self-efficacy component to his theory, which held that

people possessed a self-system that enabled them to exercise 12 control over their

thoughts, feelings, and actions.

(Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007) constructed self-efficacy as related to the

concept of self-control and the ability to modulate someone's behavior to reach

their goals. It could somewhat be confused with self-regulation. They were related

but still separated concepts. Self-regulation was an individual's self-generated

thoughts, feelings, and actions that were systematically designed to affect one's

learning. At the same time, self-efficacy was a concept more closely related to an

individual's perceived abilities.

Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as self-perceptions or beliefs of the

capability to learn or perform tasks at designated levels. The other authors

attempted to define self-efficacy, but they all paraphrased to refer to Bandura's

definition. McCombs (2001) cited Bandura (1991), explaining self-efficacy

judgments about the learner's judgment of their competency for successful task

completion. Schunk (2001) acknowledged that self-efficacy was a construct in

Bandura's theory of human functioning and defined it as beliefs about one's

capabilities to learn or perform behaviors at designated levels.

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According to Michael P. Carey and Andrew Forsyth, self-efficacy

techniques helped students understand the difference among constructs from

related social-cognitive theories (e.g., self-efficacy, outcome expectancies,

behavioral intentions, behavioral difficulty, self-esteem, optimism, etc.). These

encouraged students to develop a measure of self-efficacy for any health-related

behavior that avoided the confounding of self-efficacy with these other constructs.

The health behavior was socially stigmatized (e.g., sexual behavior, illegal drug

use). The social norms suggested that one should frequently engage in a behavior

(e.g., exercise) and discussed how social desirability response biases might inflate

self-efficacy score.

Maddux (1995) stated that self-esteem was a personal trait while self-

efficacy was not. It was the distinction between self-esteem and self-efficacy. One

of the applications of self-efficacy was the possibility of applying it to specific fields

or even subfields of human behavior. For example, a person could have low self-

esteem but high self-efficacy levels in areas such as drawing, sports, or learning

languages. They could also have high self-esteem and feel inefficacious in math

and science. Epstein and Morling (1995) believed that the main difference between

self-efficacy and self-esteem was that the former was the assessment of capability,

and the latter was the assessment of self-worth. What a person thought he could

accomplish differed from what he thought he was worth. Bandura (1997) wrote that

individuals might judge themselves hopelessly inefficacious in a given activity

without suffering any loss of self-esteem because they did not invest their self-

worth in it.
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Self-Efficacy and Its Dimension. Pajares and Schunk (2001) stated that

a strong sense of efficacy enhanced human well-being regarding the relationship

between self-efficacy and student satisfaction. For instance, self-efficacy beliefs

influenced the stress and anxiety people to experience as they engaged in an

activity (Pajares and Miller, 1994) and probably when students were involved in a

course. Self-efficacy also predicted course satisfaction in traditional face-to-face

classrooms.

Prior research also revealed significant direct effects of students' self-

efficacy on academic expectations (Schemers et al., 2001; Lent et al., 2008).

According to these authors, students with high self-efficacy had greater academic

expectations and displayed better academic performance than those with low self-

efficacy. These findings were consistent with what Bandura postulated Bandura's

(1997) when he argued that self-efficacy was causally before outcome expectancy

as the result that individuals anticipated mainly on their judgments of self-efficacy

expectancies vary along three dimensions: magnitude, level, generality, and

strength (Bandura, 1997). Magnitude or level of self-efficacy was defined as the

number of steps of increasing difficulty that an individual feels they were capable

of doing. Bandura (1997) explained that the perceived personal efficacy might

consist of accomplishing simple tasks, developing moderately complex tasks, or

including challenging tasks.

The perceived capability for a given 16 persons was measured against

levels or magnitudes of task demands representing different degrees of challenge

or obstacles to successful performance. The generality of self-efficacy dealt with

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the degree to which success or failure in handling tasks affected self-efficacy in

situations or contexts. People had self-efficacy beliefs in different domains, and

within the network of efficacy beliefs, some were of greater importance than others.

The most fundamental self-beliefs were those around which people structured their

lives (Bandura, 1997). Again, Bandura (2001) defined generality included to the

diversity of activities or areas over which people find themselves efficacious:

Generality could vary across types of activities, the modalities in which capabilities

were expressed (behavioral, cognitive, and affective), situational variations, and

the types of individuals toward whom the behavior was directed. The strength of

self-efficacy was referred to as the resoluteness of a people's convictions that they

could perform the behavior in question (Maddux, 1995). Strength of efficacy beliefs

was related to endurance or persistence in facing hardships, challenges,

frustrations, pain, and other barriers to performance. In this case, Bandura (1997)

believed that the strength of perceived efficacy was measured by the amount of

individual assuring about a given task.

Self-Efficacy and Learning. The importance of Bandura's self-efficacy

concept for education was evident. People's judgments about their abilities could

lead them to decide which activities to try or not to try, how much effort to give, or

how persistent they would be when challenged. A student with high self-efficacy

tried to set higher purposes, tried hard to achieve her purpose, and improved her

current efficacy level as they progressed. This student used critical thinking skills,

strategies, and decision-making and did not give up easily (Bandura and Schunk,

1981; Bouffard-Bouchard, 1990; Lent, Brown and Larkin, 1984; Pajares, 1996;
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Schunk and Hanson, 1985). Thus, the highly efficacious student was more likely

to succeed. Recent studies have shown great interest in the implication of self-

efficacy in the educational domain (Pintrich and Schunk, 1996). The importance of

having a high level of self-efficacy when encountering new and challenging skills

has been

confirmed by the research on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1995; Bandura and

Schunk, 1981; Schunk and Hanson, 1985). For example, Bouffard-Bouchard,

Parent, and Larivee (1991) found that students with high self-efficacy engaged in

more effective self-regulatory strategies.

Schulze and Schulze (2003) researched believing was achieving. They

investigated the implications of self-efficacy research for family and consumer

sciences education. The research findings supported Pajares (1996) that the

effects of feelings of self-efficacy confirmed the notion that high self-efficacies

increase student learning. Students with a higher level of self-efficacy should be

better able to learn new skills and concepts needed to succeed. Students must

have the confidence necessary to cope and problem solve in the classroom and in

all other aspects of life. Factors such as goal-setting, feedback, modeling, rewards,

self-efficacy assessments, and family and consumer sciences could enable

students to become lifelong learners and prepare them for their future professional

life. Regarding self-efficacy influencing students learning, self-efficacy also

affected motivation and has been proved by well-documented research (Pajares,

1996; Schunk, 2003).

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Factors Affecting Self-Efficacy. Many studies have been conducted to

find the relationship between self-efficacy and academic performance in

mathematics (Hackett and Betz, 1989), reading and writing tasks (Shell, Colvin

and Bruning, 1995), and the use of self-regulatory strategies (Bandura, 1989).

Others examined self-efficacy in academic settings, including evaluations of

students' expected performance in a given subject (Meece, Wingfield, and Eccles,

1990) and whether students believed they were good at a given academic subject

(Marsh 1990). Suppose one accepted that students' self-efficacy was related to

their academic performance. In that case, the question remains: What educational

practices enhance students' self-efficacy?

Alderman (1999) considered some factors that formed students' self-

efficacy toward learning. These factors were modeling, goal setting, information

processing, encouragement and feedback, and rewards, which were known to

affect self-efficacy and potentially increased it. Modeling was how a novice could

learn how to master new skills. Modeling was effective and played a vital role in

increasing self-efficacy. According to Schunk (1989, 1991), it could provide explicit

information about how to acquire a skill and raise the student's expectation that he

could master the skill. Learners might develop self-efficacy from observing peers.

Similar peers offered a reasonable basis for comparison and following them to

perform a task successfully raised efficacy.

On the other hand, watching a peer fail would lower it (Bandura, 1996).

Observing peer models increased efficacy to a greater extent than teacher models

or persuasion (Schunk, 1995). According to Bandura (1997), self-modeling, which

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occurred when individuals watched replays of themselves performing tasks at their

best, raised beliefs of personal efficacy and potentially improved performance. On

the other hand, self-modeling of deficiencies had no gain for the individuals'

involvement. An essential cognitive process that affected achievement outcomes

was goal setting. Schunk (1995) believed that students with a goal might feel a

sense of efficacy to attain that goal and work hard to achieve it. He also mentioned

that the advantages of setting a goal depend on three factors:

• The proximity of the goal.

• Its specificity and;

• It is not easy.

Academic Self-Efficacy. Within an academic context, self-efficacy was

frequently described as academic self-efficacy, which defined learner judgments

about one's ability to successfully attain educational goals (Elias & MacDonald,

2007). A student's academic performance was based on the development of

cognitive skills and perceived self-efficacy, which was caused to construct

academic self-efficacy. Bandura (1977) defined academic self-efficacy as personal

judgments of one's capabilities to organize and execute courses of action to attain

designated types of educational performances. Worth (2009) also maintained

academic self-efficacy as the confidence level a student possessed to perform

particular academic tasks successfully. The factors such as level of cognitive

ability, prior education preparation, attainment, gender, attitudes towards

academic activities, and perceived self-efficacy influenced academic achievement.

Setting short-term rather than long-term goals helped students plop their academic
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self-efficacy faster. Bandura (1997) believed that using benchmarking methods

and incentives to encourage students to set short-term goals would help them

develop academic self-efficacy. Bandura (1997) described self-efficacy beliefs as

different with different individuals; they varied under other circumstances,

transformed with time, and increased academic achievements.