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Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

Article in International Journal of Indian Psychology · April 2022

DOI: 10.25215/1001.112

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Khageswar Bhati Tejaswini Priyadarshini Sethy

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The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (Online) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (Print)
Volume 10, Issue 1, January- March, 2022
DIP: 18.01.112.20221001, DOI: 10.25215/1001.112
https://www.ijip.in
Research Paper

Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

Mr. Khageswar Bhati1*, Tejaswini Priyadarshini Sethy2

ABSTRACT
The concept of self-efficacy has its root in social cognitive theory proposed by American
Psychologist, Albert Bandura, responsible for immense contribution to the field of education
and several fields of psychology i.e., Social Learning and Observational Learning, Bobo-Doll
Experiment. After the publication of “Self-Efficacy: Towards a Unifying Theory of
Behavioural Change -1977” incalculable research works in behavioural science accomplished
to predict and explain human functioning and learning with self-efficacy. Further, the
proponents associated with self-efficacy theory have extended social and observational
learning emphasizing the role of self-efficacy beyond the boundary of educational
psychology, spreading to diversified fields as psychopathology, health and medicine, political
and social change, business and international affairs (Pajares, 1996, 2004). In present context,
research in the area of student’s self-efficacy has earned growing consideration with
academic motivation and achievement. Evidence has shown that students having high self-
efficacy choose to engage themselves in different academic domains for fostering
development in their skills and abilities. When they have essential requisite skills, utilize their
efforts to face difficulty in challenging tasks. This paper highlights self-efficacy theory,
sources of efficacy beliefs- the key components in social cognitive learning theory and it
describes the practical implication to the field of education. In addition, by demonstrating
practical implications of self-efficacy theory, this paper suggests teachers and parents
consider academic self-efficacy in academic world of students.

Keywords: Self-Efficacy, Efficacy Belief, Academic Self-Efficacy, Academic Achievement

S
elf-efficacy theory is considered as a subset of social cognitive theory of Bandura.
Researchers addressed that self-efficacy theory is one of the most enduring
contributions of Bandura to the field of academic achievement, learning and
motivation (Pajares, 1996, 2004; Schunk, 1991). In social learning theory, self-efficacy is
defined by Bandura as “People’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute
courses of action required to attain designated types of performances” (Bandura, 186). Self-
efficacy concerns with the question of how an individual holds belief in his/her ability to
execute a course of action, rather than how much a person likes him/her or what skills and
abilities a person possesses. In his book, Bandura outlined the importance of self-efficacy in
following way-

1
Research Scholar, Department of Education, Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
2
M.Phil. in Education, Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
*Corresponding Author
Received: January 22, 2022; Revision Received: March 22, 2022; Accepted: March 24, 2022
© 2022, Bhati K. & Sethy T. P.; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

“People make causal contributions to their own psychosocial functioning through

mechanisms of personal agency. Among the mechanisms of agency, none is more central or
pervasive than beliefs of personal efficacy. Unless people believe they can produce desired
effects by their actions, they have little incentive to act. Efficacy belief, therefore, is a major
basis of action. People guide their live by their beliefs of personal efficacy” (Bandura, 1977,
1986, 1977).

It is revealed from Banduras’ theory that acquisition of required skills and abilities is not
sufficient for a person to perform a task; he must have the belief in his abilities that he can
undertake the task under difficult settings. For effective functioning, skill as well as efficacy
belief required to execute appropriately. These two factors of human functioning influence
one another, which are defined as “reciprocal causation”, it implies that functioning of skill
depends upon the functioning of efficacy belief and vice-versa.

Structural sources of self-efficacy

For evaluating efficacy belief, all individual acquires information from four primary sources
i.e. Mastery experience, Vicarious experience, Verbal persuasion and Emotional and
psychological states of individuals. From these sources people judge their strength and
capableness.

Mastery
Experience

Emotional & Self- Vicarious

Psychological
Efficacy Experience
States

Verbal
Persuasion

Figure 1: Sources of Self-Efficacy

1. Mastery Experience
Mastery experience has a concomitant relation with past success. Repeated past success
experience can strengthen efficacy belief. It indicates that successful past experience may
help the individual to be successful in similarly associated tasks by controlling the
environment. For example, “after strong efficacy expectations are developed through
© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 1124
 Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

repeated success, the negative impact of occasional failures is likely to be reduced”

(Bandura, 1977, p. 195). In other words, the effect of failure efficacy depends on the
strength of existing efficacy of an individual, or later failures may not negatively impact
efficacy beliefs with the same extent as the impact of earlier failure. Research works have
observed that mastery experience is one of the most influential sources among four primary
efficacy information as it handover direct and authentic personal past experience that an
individual requires to be successful.

2. Vicarious Experience
Observation is considered as the characteristic feature of social learning. In psychology
specifically Behaviourisms theory, it is emphasized that learning of an individual can occur
throughout the process observation. Self-efficacy theory is based on the principles of
Behaviouristic thought. In self-efficacy theory, vicarious experience refers to learning by
observing the success and failures of others. In an observer, vicarious experience develops
the efficacy belief that they can also achieve success like that of the participant or the person
observed. This observational experience generates a sense of social comparison and
modelling in observers. Therefore, it is addressed by researchers that vicarious experience as
the less dependable source of efficacy belief than the mastery experience.

3. Verbal Persuasion
Verbal persuasion is the third source of efficacy belief related to positive and negative
appraisal of others. Generally, it is widely used in teaching learning environments to foster
student’s belief that they are able to face difficult situations. When a teacher provides verbal
feedback like “very good”, “Excellent”, to students’ behaviour, it develops positive efficacy
beliefs about their academic skills and abilities among students. Hence, students’ self-
efficacy is influenced by encouragement and discouragement of others. Bandura expressed
that “Verbal persuasion alone may be limited in its power to create enduring increases in
perceived efficacy, but it can bolster self-change if the positive appraisal is within realistic
bounds” (Bandura, 1997, p. 101).

4. Emotional & Psychological States

Emotional and psychological state of an individual is the last and final source of efficacy
belief. It refers to emotional and psychological feedback experienced by individuals during
performing assigned tasks. According to Bandura, excessive physical and emotional efforts
to be successful in task completion might have a negative impact on performance, but
individuals who are not overcome by their stress reaction, receive efficacy belief in their
ability. This efficacy belief received from physiological and psychological state cognitively
evaluated by the individual, based on the level of arousal.

Academic Self-Efficacy
Academic self-efficacy is students’ perception in their academic skill and abilities for
accomplishing assigned tasks or activities. In other words, how students hold belief in their
capabilities in relation to academic prospectus. It can be measured by different dimensions
of students’ academic works like learning process, reading and comprehension, memory,
goal orientation, utilization of resources, peer relations, relationship with teacher, time
management, examination and adjustment in academic setting and many other aspects of
academic world. Research also showed that students’ self-efficacy is related to various
academic and learning tasks (Cheng and Chiou, 2010).

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 Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

Learning
process
Time Comprehensi
Management on

Teacher
Student Reading
relationship Academic
Self-
Efficacy

Peer Memory
Relationship

Adjustment Goal
and Orientation
Examination

Figure-2: Dimensions of Academic Self-Efficacy

In the field of educational research, academic self-efficacy is often assessed by self-reported

instruments like scales and questionnaires, where students are instructed to rate their
strength of belief about won abilities (Bandura, 2006).

Practical implication of Self-Efficacy Theory

According to this theory academic achievement of students is concomitantly related with
their positive identity structures. Theory also highlighted that self-efficacy affects choice of
activities, efforts and persistence of students. Having low self-efficacy, students tend to be
avoiding task accomplishment. Moreover, it can be hypothesized that students with higher
academic self-efficacy are likely to expend more effort and they persist longer in facing
difficulties for completion of tasks assigned to them (Bandura, 1977, 1997). Some
researchers also recommended that teachers can boost students’ self-efficacy through three
primary sources i.e., mastery experience or mastery enactive, vicarious experience and
verbal persuasion (Margolis and McCabe, 2006).

Providing feedback to students behaviour

As stated earlier, self-efficacy is influenced by verbal persuasions of others, like
encouragement and discouragement. Verbal persuasion, an important aspect of self-efficacy
which highlights the role of feedback in developing efficacy belief. Providing feedback and
reward in the form of encouragement, praise can increase efficacy belief as well as interest
in the student towards achieving academic goals. Teachers’ explicit feedback is most
important for developing self-confidence in students. Some studies involving self-efficacy
theory conducted in an academic setting to explain that continuous feedback and

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 1126
 Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

encouragement can lead the students to feel mastery about the task in hand (Pintrich &
Schunk, 2002). Therefore, teachers’ role in the classroom should be to provide explicit
feedback to student academic behaviour.

Individual consideration
Initially, researches conducted involving self-efficacy theory to explain that individuals with
high efficacy beliefs set challenging goals, accordingly make efforts to great extent for
achieving their goals, and believing their failure is the result of incomplete effort and
inappropriate strategies rather than lack of ability. It should also be considered that students
significantly differ from each other with respect to efficacy belief. A student may not have
required efficacy belief for some specific academic behaviour or task. So, while
formulating academic goals for students, their level of efficacy belief should be taken into
consideration. Self-efficacy theory underlines the importance of individual attention in
academic prospectus for academic goal setting, designing instructional programs and
determining teaching learning methods and strategies for instruction.

Emphasis on peer modelling

According to this theory, individuals can learn a skill and behaviour by observing others. In
a classroom setting, students can observe peer performance and teachers’ skills, and may
consider them as role models for attaining mastery over that specific performance and skills.
Peer modelling among children at an early stage is helpful for attaining social and academic
behaviour.

Assessing students’ social loafing

Social loafing can be addressed as one of the opposite phenomena to self-efficacy. Social
loafing is the concept which refers to the phenomenon where an individual puts less effort in
a task working with a group, compared to when he is performing the task alone. Researches
were conducted to answer why this problem is occurring in group learning and how to
prevent this phenomenon. Thus, if students perceive themselves as having a high efficacy
belief concerning a task, it is probable that they may work hard for the same task when
performing alone. In academic prospectus, teachers can evaluate students’ social loafing in
group learning and accordingly individual contribution of students can be observed.

Providing guidance for developing efficacy belief

It is highlighted in previous studies that self-efficacy is positively associated with
examination performance, which indicates students of higher self-efficacy tend to perform
well in academic prospectus compared to students with lower academic self-efficacy.
Through guidance and training, efficacy belief can be developed in students (Becher, 2009).
So, in instructional setting guidance programs need to be offered for students at the higher
stage of education.

CONCLUSION
By taking into account the above practical implication of self-efficacy theory in classroom
setting, the study concluded that the teacher role should be to provide ample opportunities
and chances to students for experiencing small wins and celebrating little successes in
academic field. Peer modelling motivation, providing verbal feedback and encouragement
along with helping students for building high efficacy belief will facilitate higher academic
success and beyond the academic world of students. Eventually, the study concludes that
implications emerged from Banduras’ self-efficacy theory and findings from earlier inquiry
in the line of self-efficacy makes sustainsive contribution to educational theory and practice.
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 Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational Practice

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Acknowledgement
The author wishes thank to all those who participated in this study and supported in the
completion of this research work.

Conflict of Interest
The author declared no conflict of interest.

How to cite this article: Bhati K. & Sethy T. P. (2022). Self-Efficacy: Theory to Educational
Practice. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 10(1), 1123-1128.
DIP:18.01.112.20221001, DOI:10.25215/1001.112

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 1128

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