Children's Perceived Academic Self-Efficacy: An Inventory Scale

Social learning theorists define perceived self-efficacy as a sense of confidence regarding the performance of specific tasks. For example, Bandura (1986) defines the construct as "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. It is concerned not with the skills one has but with the judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses" (391). Performance self-efficacy influences several aspects of behavior that are important to learning. Among these are choice of activities, effort, persistence, learning, and achievement (Bandura 1977, 1982, 1989a; Schunk 1989a, 1989b; Zimmerman, Bandura, and Martinez-Pons 1992). The most frequently cited self-efficacy theorist, Bandura, theorizes that individuals develop general anticipation regarding cause and effect based on their experiences. Furthermore, he suggests that individuals develop particular beliefs about their ability to cope with situation-specific constructs (Bandura 1977, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1989a, 1989b). If such theories are applied to the study of children's beliefs about learning, it would be logical to predict that children with high academic self-efficacy would be likely to demonstrate greater success in school. Although literature speaking directly to children's academic self-efficacy is rather sparse, what does exist supports the link between self-efficacy and academic performance. For