Self-Efficacy Theory

Self-efficacy theory, developed by psychologist Albert Bandura and introduced in a 1977 paper in Psychological Review, holds that a person's belief in their own capacity to organize and execute the actions required to produce a given level of performance is a central determinant of whether they will attempt a task, how much effort they will invest, and how long they will persist when it becomes difficult. Bandura identified four main sources from which self-efficacy beliefs are built: mastery experiences, the memory of having succeeded at a similar task before; vicarious experience, watching a comparable person succeed; verbal persuasion from others; and the physiological and emotional state a person brings to the task. In education the theory is widely applied to explain why students of similar ability can perform very differently, since a student who doubts their own capacity to succeed in a subject such as mathematics will often avoid challenging material and give up sooner than an equally able student with strong self-efficacy, and it has become a common basis for classroom strategies built around structured early success and modeling by peers.