Mimi Bong

Academic Self-Concept and Self-Efficacy: How Different Are They Really?

Academic motivation researchers sometimes struggle to decipher the distinctive characteristics of what appear to be highly analogous constructs. In this article, we discuss important similarities between self-concept and self-efficacy as well as some notable differences. Both constructs share many similarities such as centrality of perceived competence in construct definition; use of mastery experience, social comparison, and reflected appraisals as major information sources; and a domain-specific and multidimensional nature. Both predict motivation, emotion, and performance to varying degrees. However, there are also important differences. These differences include integration vs. separation of cognition and affect, heavily normative vs. goal-referenced evaluation of competence, aggregated vs. context-specific judgment, hierarchical vs. loosely hierarchical structure, past vs. future orientation, and relative temporal stability vs. malleability. We argue that self-efficacy acts as an active precursor of self-concept development and suggest that self-concept research separate out its multiple components and subprocesses and invest more effort toward making students less preoccupied with normative ability comparisons in school.

Teachers’ Collective Efficacy, Job Satisfaction, and Job Stress in Cross-Cultural Context

This study examines how teachers’ collective efficacy (TCE), job stress, and the cultural dimension of collectivism are associated with job satisfaction for 500 teachers from Canada, Korea (South Korea or Republic of Korea), and the United States. Multigroup path analysis revealed that TCE predicted job satisfaction across settings. Job stress was negatively related to job satisfaction for North American teachers (i.e., teachers from Canada and the United States), whereas the cultural dimension of collectivism was significantly related to job satisfaction for the Korean, but not for North American teachers. For motivation theorists, the results from this study provide evidence that cultural context influences how motivation beliefs are understood and expressed in diverse settings. For educators, this study underlines the importance of collective motivation as a source of individual job satisfaction.

Within-Grade Changes in Korean Girls' Motivation and Perceptions of the Learning Environment Across Domains and Achievement Levels.

This study tested whether students’ motivation and perceptions of the learning environment changed significantly within the school year. Korean high school girls’ (N 375) perceptions of the performance goal structures in the environment increased significantly throughout the school year. The girls’ personal achievement goals and task value demonstrated few significant within-grade changes, but their selfefficacy fluctuated significantly around examinations. Motivational beliefs were more stable than were perceptions of the environment. Nevertheless, the modified perceptions of the learning environment explained changes in motivation, justifying continued efforts to create a motivationally adaptive environment. Construct relations were consistent across different academic contexts. There was no evidence that low-achieving girls responded more negatively to the classroom performance goals than did their better-achieving peers.

Predictive Utility of Subject-, Task-, and Problem-Specific Self-Efficacy Judgments for Immediate and Delayed Academic Performances

Abstract Self-efficacy perceptions of Korean female high school students (N = 202) were assessed at 3 different levels of specificity in English and mathematics. Problem-specific, task-specific, and subject-specific self-efficacy beliefs all formed separate factors in both subject areas. However, the 3 self-efficacy factors were too highly correlated to contribute independently to outcome prediction. Various nested models produced comparable fits as long as they contained predictive paths from either the problem- or the task-specific self-efficacy factor. Contrary to the hypothesis, predictive relations between self-efficacy and achievement were not much affected by their temporal contiguity. When the author combined English and math factors in a single structural model, English achievement was predicted only by English self-efficacy and math achievement only by math self-efficacy. The same pattern was maintained regardless of the specificity of self-efficacy measures.

Personal Factors Affecting the Generality of Academic Self-Efficacy Judgments: Gender, Ethnicity, and Relative Expertise

Abstract The generality of academic self-efficacy judgments of groups of students with different personal characteristics was compared, with a sample drawn from a previous study (M. Bong, 1997). Six 1st-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models of different generality were fitted separately to each group. When those models demonstrated an acceptable fit, 2nd-order CFA models were tested. The boys demonstrated more comparable strengths of self-efficacy across academic domains than the girls, who more clearly distinguished between their verbal and math self-efficacy. The Hispanic students made a clearer distinction between Spanish self-efficacy and self-efficacy in other verbal subjects than did the non-Hispanic students. Across verbal and math domains, the students who were in advanced placement classes demonstrated more conservative generality of their self-efficacy judgments than those in regular classes. It appears that students make more context-specific judgments of their academic self-efficacy ...

Comparison of Self-Beliefs for Predicting Student Motivation and Achievement

ABSTRACT The authors examined whether self-concept, self-efficacy, and self-esteem show differential predictive utility for academic achievement across age groups and domains. More specifically, the relationships of 3 self-constructs with achievement were examined in mathematics for elementary school students and mathematics and language arts for middle school students in Korea. Task value and test anxiety were hypothesized to mediate these relationships. Consistent with previous reports, domain-specific self-constructs such as self-efficacy and self-concept were better predictors of task value and achievement than was general self-esteem. Task value and test anxiety significantly mediated only the relationships of self-efficacy assessed by the Bandura-type scale to achievement. These domain-specific relationships tended to be stronger for middle school than elementary school students and in mathematics than language arts.

Measuring self-efficacy: Multitrait-multimethod comparison of scaling procedures.

Convergent and discriminant validity of various self-efficacy measures was examined across 2 studies. In Study 1, U.S. high school students (N = 358) rated their self-efficacy in 6 school subjects in reference to either specific problems or general self-efficacy statements on the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). In Study 2, Korean female high school students (N = 235) judged their perceived efficacy in reference to specific problems, specific task descriptions, and MSLQ statements in 3 school subjects. Across Studies 1 and 2, the 1st-order confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) provided support for both convergent validity of different self-efficacy responses and discriminant validity of perceived self-efficacy across different subject areas. The 2nd-order CFAs confirmed the discriminant validity of self-efficacy beliefs. Substantial method effects were also observed. The problem- and task-referencing methods correlated with each other to a greater extent than they did with the MSLQ Self-Efficacy scale.

Self-efficacy and achievement goals as motivational links between perceived contexts and achievement

The purposes of the present study were to investigate (a) how the subjectively perceived achievement goals of significant others would predict the academic self-efficacy and achievement goals of Korean adolescents and (b) how those self-efficacy and achievement goals in turn predicted their achievement. We also compared these predictive relationships between 339 elementary and 507 middle school students. The perceived achievement goals of teachers, peers and parents made unique contributions to students’ self-efficacy and achievement goals in mathematics. The perceived achievement goals of teachers demonstrated stronger relationships with students’ motivation in the elementary school than middle school samples, whereas those of peers and parents showed comparable relationships across the two samples. The perceived performance goals of peers and parents displayed particularly strong links to students’ motivation. Among the motivation variables, self-efficacy again emerged as the most consistent and powerful predictor of achievement. Our results confirmed perceived contexts and motivation as critical contributors to students’ achievement in school.

Do Students Distinguish between Different Types of Performance Goals

The authors tested whether multiple components of a performance goal were differentiated by a group of Korean middle school students (N = 239). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the normative and outcome components as well as the approach and avoidance components correlated too highly to be considered independent. A 2-factor model with a mastery goal and a performance goal most parsimoniously illustrated students’ achievement goal responses. In structural equation modeling, these 2 achievement goals functioned as conduits between perceived learning contexts and preference for course difficulty. Mastery goals were predicted positively by perceptions of school mastery goal structures and negatively by perceived importance of ability for academic success. Performance goals were positively predicted by perceptions of both school mastery and school performance goal structures with the latter demonstrating substantially stronger predictive power. Mastery goals in turn positively predicted preference for challenging courses, whereas performance goals positively predicted preference for easy courses.

Interaction between task values and self-efficacy on maladaptive achievement strategy use

We tested the interaction between task value and self-efficacy on defensive pessimism, academic cheating, procrastination and self-handicapping among 574 Korean 11th graders in the context of English as a foreign language. We hypothesised that perceiving high value in tasks or domains for which self-efficacy was low would pose a threat to perceived self-worth, leading students to resort to various maladaptive achievement strategies. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that, consistent with our hypothesis, the relationships of task value with academic cheating and procrastination depended on the level of self-efficacy. Perceiving high intrinsic value positively predicted academic cheating for students with low self-efficacy but not for students with high self-efficacy. Likewise, perceiving intrinsic or utility value positively predicted procrastination for students with low self-efficacy but not for students with high self-efficacy. Our findings support the major tenets of self-worth theory.