Essay On Self Efficacy And Social Cognitive Theory

This chapter will present three bodies of relevant literature: 1) literature on self-efficacy and social cognitive theory, 2) studies on teachers’ efficacy beliefs and its measurement, 3) research about teachers’ level of proficiency in English.

2.1 Self-efficacy and social cognitive theory

2.1.1Social cognitive theory

This part will firstly present something about social cognitive theory because it is the more general framework behind the self-efficacy theory. Social cognitive theory is a view of human functioning focusing on human agency (Bandura, 2001) and a way to understand “human cognition, action, motivation, and emotion that assumes that people are capable of self-reflection and self-regulation.” (Maddux, 1995, p. 4)

The roots of social

According to Bandura (1993, p.118), self-efficacy can be defined as “people’s beliefs about their capabilities to exercise control over their own level of functioning and over events that affect their lives”. More to the point, these beliefs will mobilize the cognitive, emotional, and social resources to serve purposes.

Bandura distinguished self-efficacy from other constructs such as self-esteem, and self-concept. To begin with, self-esteem and self-efficacy were two entirely different concepts. According to Bandura (1997, p11), the perceived self-efficacy is concerned with personal capacity while self-esteem was a sense of self-worth. Specifically, the level of self-efficacy will influence people’s beliefs about their capacities that whether or not they could successfully complete a task or achieve certain goals. Nevertheless, self-esteem, as a kind of self judgment, will “affect neither personal goals nor performance” (Mone, Baker and Jeffries, 1995). For instance, a person who is a terrible swimmer would probably have poor self-efficacy with regard to swimming, but this will not affect this person’s self-esteem if he/she doesn’t count on swimming to build

Therefore, self-concept is usually measured generally and is mostly concerned with global self-images. However, self-efficacy beliefs vary depending on domains of activities, different levels of difficulty within the same activity, and even the different circumstances (Bandura, 1997, p.11). For example, a person who has low self-efficacy in swimming may have high self-efficacy in singing, while the general self-concept may fail to explain this specificity. In conclusion, self-efficacy is different from global constructs of self-esteem and self-concept as it is specific to certain activity, certain difficulty level and certain