Examining self-efficacy during learning: variability and relations to behavior, performance, and learning

Self-regulated learning (SRL) theorists propose that learners' motivations and cognitive and metacognitive processes interact dynamically during learning, yet researchers typically measure motivational constructs as stable factors. In this study, self-efficacy was assessed frequently to observe its variability during learning and how learners' efficacy related to their problem-solving performance and behavior. Students responded to self-efficacy prompts after every fourth problem of an algebra unit completed in an intelligent tutoring system. The software logged students' problem-solving behaviors and performance. The results of stability and change, path, and correlational analyses indicate that learners' feelings of efficacy varied reliably over the learning task. Their prior performance (i.e., accuracy) predicted subsequent self-efficacy judgments, but this relationship diminished over time as judgments were decreasingly informed by accuracy and increasingly informed by fluency. Controlling for prior achievement and self-efficacy, increases in efficacy during one problem-solving period predicted help-seeking behavior, performance, and learning in the next period. Findings suggest that self-efficacy varies during learning, that students consider multiple aspects of performance to inform their efficacy judgments, and that changes in efficacy influence self-regulated learning processes and outcomes.