Procrastinating and Self-efficacy: Tracing Vicious and Virtuous Circles In Self-regulated Learning

“How self-efficacy sustains itself”

How a student perceives their self-efficacy, that is “the anticipation of success based on one’s own competencies”  greatly influences their motivation to learn.  Perceptions of self-efficacy are related to academic performance. Self-efficacy depends on previous experiences of success in academic tasks.  Educational researchers Sitzmanna and Yeo found that self-efficacy was a product of performance on previous experiences and not the driving force behind it.  If a student perceives himself to have high self-efficacy it can affect their performance in a positive way.  Likewise, if a student’s perceived self-efficacy is low, it can negatively affect their quality of studying and thereby affect their academic performance.  This can lead to a cycle which can lead to high or low achievement.

The article mentioned that according to Zimmerman’s cyclical-interactive theoretical model of self-regulated learning, there are three phases a student goes through: a forethought phase, a performance phase and a self-reflection phase.  In the forethought phase, students estimate their self-efficacy on a certain task.  They assess what it will take to complete the task.  It is in this phase that procrastination occurs as the students assess whether or not they fell adept to complete the task and they may perceive their goal achievement level as being pretty low. In the performance phase, students who are highly self-efficacious will use cognitive learning strategies at their disposal which will help them to succeed in completing the task successfully.   On the other hand, if the student doesn’t have many learning strategies, and if he or she anticipates failure, they may become tempted to avoid this failure to the point of avoiding the task altogether.  Such actions would then lead to a cycle repeated failure which could leave some students vulnerable and unable to self-regulate their learning.  In the self-reflection phase students perceptions are then reshaped.  Students who have a high degree of goal achievement due to their high level of perceived self-efficacy and their experiences of success will become more motivated when it comes to taking on new challenges.  

Allgaier A., Fink S., Lachner A., Nückles M. Wäschle K., Procrastinating and self-efficacy: Tracing 

          vicious and virtuous circles in self-regulated learning. Learning and Instruction 29 (2014) 103-

          114, Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.09.005