Self-efficacy in the Classroom: The Roles of Motivation, Positivity and Resilience

Self-efficacy has been found to be consistently related to academic achievement. In a recent analysis of a nationally representative sample of over 3000 UK school children aged 7–12 years old, we found that self-efficacy is one of the four dimensions of children’s classroom-related well-being and motivation to learn. In this chapter, we will examine the extent to which children's self-efficacy (academic, emotional and social) can be explained by individual differences in motivation, positivity and resilience and whether these patterns are influenced by the age and gender of pupils. We found that positivity and resilience contributed to the children’s self-efficacy beliefs in all three domains, but there was a separation of contribution when we considered extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in relation to self-efficacy: specifically, intrinsic motivation contributed to the children’s emotional and academic self-efficacy only, whereas extrinsic motivation contributed to social self-efficacy.