Self-Efficacy, Interest, and Task Performance
Within-Task Changes, Mutual Relationships, and Predictive Effects
Abstract
Abstract. The aim of this study was to examine how possible changes in self-efficacy and interest during a task relate to each other and whether such changes independently predict overall task performance. To achieve this, the participants, one hundred ninth-grade students, were repetitively asked to rate their efficacy judgments and interest while they were working on a complex problem-solving task. The results from a series of latent growth curve models showed a significant overall increase in students' self-efficacy during the task. Changes in interest and self-efficacy were positively correlated, and, after controlling for the effects of prior mathematics achievement, both the initial level of self-efficacy and the rate of change in interest independently predicted final task performance.
Zusammenfassung. Ziel der Studie war es zu untersuchen, wie mögliche Veränderungen der Selbstwirksamkeit und des Interesses während der Bearbeitung einer Aufgabe zusammenhängen und ob solche Veränderungen die Leistung in der Aufgabe vorhersagen. Dazu wurden 100 Schüler (9. Klasse) gebeten, ihre Selbstwirksamkeit und ihr Interesse einzuschätzen, während sie eine komplexe Problemlöseaufgabe bearbeiteten. Die Ergebnisse von mehreren latent-growth-curve-Modellen zeigten einen signifikanten Zuwachs der Selbstwirksamkeit der Schüler während der Aufgabenbearbeitung. Die Veränderungen von Interesse und Selbstwirksamkeit waren miteinander positiv korreliert, und, nachdem die Leistung in Mathematik kontrolliert wurde, sagten sowohl die Selbstwirksamkeit vor der Aufgabe als auch die Änderungsrate von Interesse die Leistung am Ende der Aufgabe vorher.
References
2005). Students, tasks and emotions: Identifying the contribution of emotions to students' reading of popular culture and popular science texts. Learning and Instruction, 15, 433– 447
(2002). Interest, learning, and the psychological processes that mediate their relationship. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 545– 561
(2002). Gender and interest processes in response to literary texts: Situational and individual interest. Learning and Instruction, 12, 411– 428
(2006). Measuring self-regulated learning processes through tracking patterns of student interaction with achievement activities. Educational Psychology Review, 18, 267– 286
(1996). The role of importance and interest in the processing of text. Educational Psychology Review, 8, 89– 121
(1994). The influence of topic knowledge, domain knowledge, and interest on the comprehension of scientific exposition. Learning and Individual Differences, 6, 379– 397
(1998). Profiling the differences in students' knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 435– 447
(1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84, 191– 215
(1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory . NJ: Prentice-Hall
(1989). Regulation of cognitive processes through perceived self-efficacy. Developmental Psychology, 25, 729– 735
(1997). Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control . New York: Freeman
(1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 586– 598
(1960). Conflict, arousal, and curiosity . New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company
(2000). Evaluation of an intervention to increase realistic self-efficacy and interests in college women. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 56, 35– 52
(1993). Being concerned with well-being and with learning. Educational Psychologist, 28, 149– 167
(1999). Motivated learning: Studying student x situation transactional units. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 14, 41– 55
(2000). Self-regulated learning: Finding a balance between learning- and ego-protective goals. In M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation (pp. 417-450). San Diego, CA: Academic Press
(2004). Autoregressive latent trajectory (ALT) models: A synthesis of two traditions. Sociological Methods & Research, 32, 336– 383
(1986). The effects of mathematics task performance on math self-efficacy and task interest. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 28, 149– 162
(2001). An examination of situational interest and its sources. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 383– 400
(2001). The best of both worlds: Combining autoregressive and latent curve models. In L.M. Collins & A.G. Sayer (Eds.), New methods for the analysis of change (pp. 107-135). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
(1999). An introduction to latent variable growth curve modeling: Concepts, issues, and applications . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers
(2002). Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 109– 132
(1998). What good are positive emotions?. Review of General Psychology, 2, 300– 319
(2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218– 226
(1995). Definitions, traditions, and a general framework for understanding complex problem solving. In P.A. Frensch & J. Funke (Eds.), Complex problem solving: The European perspective (pp. 3-25). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1993). Microworlds based on linear equation systems: A new approach to complex problem solving and experimental results. In G. Strube & K.F. Wender (Eds.), The cognitive psychology of knowledge (pp. 313-330). Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland/Elsevier Science Publishers
(2001). The informational impact of mood on effort mobilization: A study of cardiovascular and electrodermal responses. Emotion, 1, 12– 24
(1990). Effects of verbal and mathematics task performance on task and career self-efficacy and interest. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 37, 169– 177
(1987). Task self-efficacy and task interest as a function of performance on a gender-neutral task. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 30, 203– 215
(1990). Interest and its contribution as a mental resource for learning. Review of Educational Research, 60, 549– 571
(1992). Situational interest and its impact on reading and expository writing. In K.A. Renninger, S. Hidi & A. Krapp (Eds.), The role of interest in learning and development (pp. 215-238). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1– 55
(1977). Human emotions . New York: Plenum
(2002). Changes in children's self-competence and values: Gender and domain differences across grades one though twelve. Child Development, 73, 509– 527
(1992). Interest, learning, and development. In K.A. Renninger & S. Hidi (Eds.), The role of interest in learning and development (pp. 3-25). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
(1991). Self-Regulation through goal-setting. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 212– 247
(1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 79– 122
(2006). Development of interests and competency beliefs in Italian adolescents: An exploration of circumplex structure and bidirectional relationships. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53, 181– 191
(2005). Academic self-concept, interest, grades, and standardized test scores: Reciprocal effects models of causal ordering. Child Development, 76, 397– 416
(1993). Situational interest: Its multifaceted structure in the secondary school mathematics classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 424– 436
(1991). Relation of self-efficacy beliefs to academic outcomes: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38, 30– 38
(1998-2006). Mplus user's guide (4 ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén
(2002). Identifying the antecedent in the relation between career interests and self-efficacy: Is it one, the other, or both?. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 49, 290– 301
(1999). Motivational and cognitive predictors of goal setting and task performance. International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 499– 513
(2002). Individual differences and developmental trends in motivation: Integrating person-centered and variable-centered methods. In P.R. Pintrich & M.L. Maehr (Eds.), Advances in motivations and achievement (Vol. 12, pp. 241-275). Amsterdam: JAI
(2005). Task-motivation during the first school years: A person-oriented approach to longitudinal data. Learning and Instruction, 15, 103– 122
(1996). Self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. Review of Educational Research, 66, 543– 578
(1997). Current directions in self-efficacy research. In M. Maehr & P.R. Pintrich (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement (vol. 10, pp. 1-49). Greenwich: JAI
(2003). The relation of self-efficacy and interests: A meta-analysis of 60 samples. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 62, 221– 236
(2006). Maintaining activity engagement: Individual differences in the process of self-regulating motivation. Journal of Personality, 74, 1697–
(2001). A scaled difference χ2 test statistic for moment structure analysis. Psychometrika, 66, 507– 514
(1991). Interest, learning, and motivation. Educational Psychologist, 26, 299– 323
(1996). Topic interest, text representation, and quality of experience. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 3– 18
(1996). Topic interest and free recall of expository text. Learning and Individual Differences, 8, 141– 160
(1997). Situational interest in literary text. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 22, 436– 456
(1995). Sources of situational interest. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27, 1– 17
(2001). Situational interest: A review of the literature and directions for future research. Educational Psychology Review, 13, 23– 52
(2000). Self-regulation and academic learning: Self-efficacy enhancing interventions. In M. Boekaerts & P.R. Pintrich (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 631-649). San Diego, CA: Academic Press
(2003). Self-efficacy and interest: Experimental studies of optimal incompetence. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 62, 237– 249
(2005). What is interesting? Exploring the appraisal structure of interest. Emotion, 5, 89– 102
(2005). Longitudinal analysis of the link between learning motivation and competence beliefs among elementary school children. Learning and Instruction, 15, 87– 102
(1994). Overconfidence in initial self-efficacy judgments: Effects on decision processes and performance. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 59, 452– 474
(1994). Interest, prior knowledge, and learning. Review of Educational Research, 64, 37– 54
(1995). Interest and metacognitive word knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 399– 405
(1962). Affect, imagery, consciousness: Vol.I. The positive affects . Oxford, England: Springer-Verlag
(2002). Development of interests and competency beliefs: A 1-year longitudinal study of fifth- to eighth-grade students using the ICA-R and structural equation modeling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 49, 148– 163
(2006). When self-efficacy negatively relates to motivation and performance in a learning context. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1146– 1153
(2002). Two studies examining the negative effect of self-efficacy on performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 506– 516
(2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 4– 69
(1999). Motivation and metacognition when learning a complex system. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 14, 541– 554
(2000). Does motivation affect performance via persistence?. Learning and Instruction, 10, 293– 309
(2006). An examination of the dynamic relationship between self-efficacy and performance across levels of analysis and levels of specificity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1088– 1101
(2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 82– 91
(