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At present,whether in personality psychology,educational psychology or socialpsychology,self-efficacy is one important concept that has attracted wide attention.

As early as 1977,Bandura,an American psychologist,put forward the conceptof“self-efficacy”in his sociological research Self-efficacy:Toward a UnifyingTheory of Behavioral Change.Bandura(1977)believes that“personal efficacydetermine whether coping behavior will be initiated,how much effort will beexpended,and how long it will be sustained in the face of obstacles and aversiveexperiences”(p.191).It is a kind of subjective judgment and feeling of the ability tocomplete the task.Bandura(1977)emphasized that self-efficacy includes twocomponents:“outcome expectancies”and“efficacy expectations”.“An outcomeexpectancy is defined as a person’s estimate that a given behavior will lead to certainoutcome”(p.193).If people predict that a certain behavior will lead to a specific result,then the behavior may be activated and selected.“An efficacy expectation isthe conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce theoutcomes”(p.193).It means whether a person is confident that he or she has theability to act with a fixed result.When a person firmly believes that he has thecapacity to go in for an action,he will have a high sense of self-efficacy and will carryout that activity.

In addition,Pintrich and De Groot(1990)pointed out that self-efficacy is the“perceived competence and confidence in performance of...work”(p.35).Stajkovic(1998)defined self-efficacy as a kind of exact belief of an individual’s own ability,which enables people to mobilize necessary motivation,cognitive resources andrelated actions in a given environment to successfully complete a specific task.

2.2 Relevant Researches on Self-efficacy

The researches on self-efficacy can be divided into three parts:the research ongeneral self-efficacy,and more specifically,the research on the role of self-efficacy inacademic performance,as well as the research on the cultivation of academicself-efficacy.All the three parts will look into the study both in China and abroad.

2.2.1 Research on self-efficacy abroad

There are abundant researches on self-efficacy in educational field abroad.Thesestudies are mostly about the development of self-efficacy scale and the use of thescale to compare the relationship between self-efficacy and other factors.

The research done by Pintrich and De Groot(1990)makes the comparison ofself-efficacy between male and female students.They found the difference betweenboys and girls was not obvious at the primary and secondary school stage.Only afterjunior high school did boys show higher self-efficacy.Why there are differences inself-efficacy among students of different genders needs further study.

Chapter 3 Research Methodology....................22

3.1 Research Questions.............................22

3.2.Research Tools..............................23

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion.................................31

4.1 Results and Analysis of the Questionnaire Survey..........................31

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