CHAPTER 2

ADOLESCENTS’
DEVELOPMENT OF
PERSONAL AGENCY

The Role of Self-Efficacy Beliefs and

Self-Regulatory Skill

B. J. ZIMMERMAN
Barry J.AND T. J. CLEARY
Zimmerman and Timothy J. Cleary

Adolescence is often a stressful period during development because it

involves a pivotal transition from childhood dependency to adulthood
independence and self-sufficiency (Smith, Cowie, & Blades, 1998). One
major challenge that adolescents encounter during their teenage years
involves acquiring a sense of personal agency in what often seems to be
a recalcitrant world. Personal agency refers to one’s capability to origi-
nate and direct actions for given purposes. It is influenced by the belief
in one’s effectiveness in performing specific tasks, which is termed self-
efficacy, as well as by one’s actual skill. In this chapter, we trace the
development of personal agency during adolescence as well as the
defining and distinctive features of adolescent students’ self-efficacy
beliefs. We then contrast self-efficacy with alternative self-related con-

Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents, 45–69

Copyright © 2006 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 45
46 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

structs, and we examine its causal role in adolescents’ motivation,

achievement, and academic development. Finally, we describe the inter-
dependence of adolescents’ academic self-efficacy beliefs and their use
of self-regulatory processes, and we consider the implications of this
research for designing training interventions to enhance students’ aca-
demic agency.

ADOLESCENCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONAL AGENCY

In both the schools and the larger society, the onset of adolescence
marks a profound shift in expectations regarding students’ ability to
assume responsibility for their functioning. When students enter mid-
dle or junior high schools, they are no longer under the direct control
of a single teacher but instead are taught by a number of teachers in
different classrooms, often with different classmates. These adolescents
are expected to personally manage these diverse requirements for learn-
ing in class or to seek out help when it is needed, especially from their
teachers. At this middle level of schooling, a significant part of stu-
dents’ academic work is completed outside of class, including reading
assigned texts, writing papers, and preparing for tests. Adolescents’ suc-
cess in making this developmental transition is complicated by a major
increase in the difficulty of the academic work that is assigned in mid-
dle or junior high schools (Wigfield, Eccles, & Pintrich, 1996). If adoles-
cents fail to regulate this demanding academic environment effectively,
their academic grades will likely decline—often leading to a loss of self-
efficacy about succeeding in school. As their self-efficacy diminishes,
adolescents can become embedded in a downward cycle of academic
achievement that may involve aligning themselves with peers who pos-
sess unfavorable views about the value and importance of school (Stein-
berg, Brown, & Dornbusch, 1996). Conversely, adolescents with a strong
sense of efficacy for learning are more resilient and better able to resist
the adverse academic influences of low-achieving peers than are those
with a weak sense of efficacy (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pas-
torelli, 1996).
To succeed in school, adolescents develop diverse self-regulatory
skills, such as goal setting, self-monitoring, time management, and self-
evaluation. Homework assignments must be transformed into personal
goals; study time needs to be allocated prudently; and completion of
the goals needs to be self-monitored closely. Adolescents also must learn
powerful strategies to enhance various forms of learning, such as note-
taking, help-seeking, storing and recalling information, reading, writ-
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 47

ing, and test preparation (Zimmerman, Bonner, & Kovach, 1996). Strat-
egies are also beneficial in assisting them to manage out-of-school
extracurricular activities, such as music or sports (Cleary & Zimmer-
man, 2001; McPherson & Zimmerman, 2002). Unfortunately, adoles-
cents are often poor at setting goals and anticipating the consequences
of various courses of action. As a result, they fail to employ effective
task-specific strategies such as preparing for tests. Later in this chapter,
we will discuss how effective strategies can be learned through observa-
tion of successful models and from personal experiences with success
and failure. We will also describe how self-regulated students cope with
failure in a sequence of cyclical self-processes without experiencing a
loss of self-efficacy and how this resilient sense of self-efficacy can sus-
tain their efforts to learn in a self-directed way. This belief in one’s self-
regulative capability to attain goals is the core of a resolute sense of per-
sonal agency.

WHAT IS SELF-EFFICACY AND

HOW ARE THESE BELIEFS DISTINCTIVE?

Self-efficacy refers to subjective judgments of one’s capabilities to orga-

nize and execute courses of action to attain designated goals (Bandura,
1977, 1997). It is a belief about what a person can do rather than per-
sonal judgments about one’s physical or personality attributes. It is also
context-specific and varies across several dimensions, such as level, gen-
erality, and strength. The level of self-efficacy refers to its dependence
on the difficultly level of a particular task, such as math addition prob-
lems of increasing difficulty; generality of self-efficacy beliefs refers to the
transferability of one’s efficacy judgments across different tasks or activi-
ties, such as different academic subjects; strength of efficacy judgments
pertains to the certainty with which one can perform a specific task
(Zimmerman, 1995).
The construct of self-efficacy has a variety of distinctive characteris-
tics. These features are important because they provide a point of com-
parison with other constructs and have implications for how self-efficacy
perceptions should be measured. First, self-efficacy judgments focus on
perceived capabilities to perform an activity rather than on personality
or psychological traits or characteristics (Zimmerman, 1995). In other
words, self-efficacy addresses “how well can I do something?” rather
than “what am I like?” Second, self-efficacy percepts are distinctive
because they are not only domain-specific but are also context- and
task-specific. In terms of context-specificity, a student may express a
lower sense of efficacy to learn mathematics in competitive classroom
48 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

structures than in cooperative ones. However, self-efficacy measures are

also multi-dimensional in nature in that they vary across specific tasks
or activities within a particular domain. For example, one may report
feeling capable of performing addition and multiplication problems but
may have low efficacy perceptions for solving subtraction and division
problems. This multi-dimensional level of analysis is a hallmark feature
of microanalytic, self-efficacy assessment (Bandura, 1997; Cleary & Zim-
merman, 2004).
A third feature of self-efficacy is its dependence on a mastery criterion
of performance rather than on normative or other criteria. For example,
students rate how well they can write an essay at a specific level of perfor-
mance rather than how much better they can write than their peers.
Finally, self-efficacy beliefs are typically assessed prior to engaging in a
particular task or activity. This antecedent property provides the temporal
ordering necessary for assessing the role of efficacy percepts in causal
structures. As a result, self-efficacy has been conceptualized as a fore-
thought process within self-regulation models because of its proactive
impact on performance and self-evaluative processes following perfor-
mance (Zimmerman, 2000).

HOW IS SELF-EFFICACY DIFFERENT FROM

OTHER TYPES OF SELF-BELIEFS?

Expectancy-Related Constructs

Constructs often confused with self-efficacy pertain to individuals’

self-perceptions regarding their personal qualities, characteristics, and/
or competencies. These include self-concept, self-esteem, outcome
expectations, and locus of control. Although these terms are often mis-
takenly used interchangeably by laypersons, they represent quite dis-
tinct constructs.

Self-Concept
Although the conceptual distinction between self-efficacy and self-con-
cept beliefs may appear minimal at first glance, the two constructs repre-
sent different phenomena (Bandura, 1986). Self-concept refers to a
generalized self-assessment incorporating a variety of self-reactions and
beliefs such as feelings of self-worth and general beliefs of competence. In
contrast, self-efficacy beliefs are context-specific judgments of personal
capability to organize and execute a course of action to attain a set goal.
Self-efficacy focuses more specifically on the tasks or activities that an
individual feels capable of performing rather than a more global assess-
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 49

ment of “how good you are at something” as provided in assessments of

self-concept. It should be noted that measures of self-concept may include
self-efficacy items but also incorporate items pertaining to self-esteem
and global perceptions of competence.
The distinction between these two self-perceptions has been estab-
lished empirically by a number of researchers (see Bong & Skaalvik,
2003). For example, Pajares and Miller (1994) used path analysis to exam-
ine the predictive and mediational roles of self-efficacy in the mathemati-
cal problem-solving skills of college students. The researchers developed
a model incorporating variables such as self-efficacy, self-concept, per-
ceived usefulness, prior mathematics experience, and mathematics prob-
lem-solving. Self-efficacy was a better predictor of math performance
than was self-concept and also exerted an indirect impact on performance
through self-concept. Thus, self-efficacy enhances academic performance
directly as well as indirectly through its influence on a student’s self-con-
cept.

Self-Esteem
Self-esteem has been defined as a type of belief involving judg-
ments of self-worth. It is an affective reaction indicating how a person
feels about him- or herself. This is quite distinct from self-efficacy per-
ceptions, which involve cognitive judgments of personal capability (Pin-
trich & Schunk, 2002). Perceptions of worth or self-esteem may develop
from a person’s global self-perception (i.e., self-concept) as well as from
a variety of other sources, such as possession of attributes that are
either valued or de-valued by society (Bandura, 1997). Thus, a person
may establish feelings of worth or think “I am a good person” if she
perceives herself as being competent in particular domains or as pos-
sessing socially-important characteristics, such as altruism and empa-
thy.
Although positive self-esteem is desirable and even necessary for adap-
tive functioning, the key issues are whether self-esteem is related to self-
efficacy perceptions and whether it is a distinctive predictor of academic
performance from self-efficacy. The comparative effects of self-efficacy
and self-esteem have been investigated by Mone, Baker, and Jeffries
(1995), who studied the validity of self-efficacy and self-esteem for pre-
dicting the personal goals and performance of college students. Students
were given these measures prior to three exams throughout the semester.
Self-efficacy accounted for almost half of the variance in the prediction of
goals and between 6% and 14% of the variance in the prediction of per-
formance. Self-esteem was not predictive of either outcome. Clearly, self-
efficacy is a distinctive predictor of academic outcomes compared to self-
esteem. These findings lend support for the contention that the predic-
50 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

tiveness of self-perception measures increase as the task-specificity of the

items increase.

Outcome Expectations
Although it has been argued that outcome expectations are distinctive
and important for understanding behavior (Bandura, 1997), research has
shown that self-efficacy beliefs are usually better predictors of behavior
than are outcome expectations (Schunk & Miller, 2002). Shell, Murphy,
and Bruning (1989) examined the predictive power of self-efficacy and
outcome expectations on reading and writing achievement. Self-efficacy
was assessed as a student’s perceived capability to perform various read-
ing and writing tasks, whereas outcome expectations were students’ rat-
ings of the importance of reading and writing skills in attaining various
outcomes in employment, social endeavors, family life, and education.
Although self-efficacy and outcome expectations accounted for 32% of the
variance in reading achievement, self-efficacy accounted for most of that
variance (28%).

Perceived Control
The construct of perceived control, which emerged from earlier
research on locus of control (Rotter, 1966), is concerned with general
expectancies that outcomes are controlled by either one’s behavior or by
external events. This dualistic view of control suggests that an internal
locus of control promotes self-directed behavior, whereas external locus
of control inhibits one’s agentic abilities. Perceptions of control and per-
ceived self-efficacy are similar in that they both deal with how individu-
als can act in agentic ways on their environment. Self-efficacious
individuals and those with an internal locus of control will exhibit more
self-directed behavior than will low self-efficacious individuals or those
with an external locus of control. However, similar to the distinction
between outcome expectations and self-efficacy, perceived control does
not take into account how confident an individual feels about perform-
ing specific tasks within a particular context. In addition, Bandura
(1986, 1997) questioned the value of de-contextualized perceptions of
control. In support of this conclusion, Smith (1989) found that locus of
control did not predict improvement in academic performance and did
not reduce the anxiety of anxious students who underwent coping skills
training. Self-efficacy, however, did predict such improvements. In
essence, self-efficacy judgments differ from other expectancy constructs
because they are task- and context-specific and focus exclusively on
one’s perceptions of capability.
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 51

HOW DO SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS AFFECT ADOLESCENTS’

SCHOOL-RELATED FUNCTIONING?

One might argue that assessing adolescents’ self-beliefs and perceptions

of capability is important because it can help parents and teachers empa-
thize with or at least better understand how adolescents interpret and
perceive the world in which they live. Although enhanced parental and
teacher understanding is beneficial, the key issue for educators involves
whether self-efficacy has a significant impact on adolescents’ ability to suc-
ceed in school. In this section, we discuss the relationship between self-
efficacy and three important variables related to school functioning: aca-
demic motivation, academic achievement, and academic and personal
development. The causal influence of self-efficacy on these variables will
be emphasized.

Academic Motivation

Motivation has been defined by social cognitive researchers as a process

in which goal-directed behavior is instigated and sustained (Pintrich &
Schunk, 2002). It is an important variable because it has been consistently
associated with academic competence (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002) and
is often the subject of teacher concerns about students struggling in
school. Motivation can manifest itself in various forms such as effort, per-
sistence, and choice of activities—indexes that are hypothesized to be
influenced by students’ self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). This hypothesis has
been consistently confirmed by researchers over the past few decades
(Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1996; Schunk, 1981; Schunk & Hanson, 1985).
That is, when students believe that they can perform a task in a proficient
manner, they will become more engaged in the activity, work harder, and
sustain high levels of effort even when obstacles are encountered.
In terms of effort, two measures have typically been employed in
research: rate of performance and expenditure of energy (Zimmerman,
1995). There is supporting evidence for the association between self-
efficacy and both indexes. Schunk and his colleagues showed that stu-
dents’ perceived self-efficacy for learning correlates positively with their
rate of solution of arithmetic problems (Schunk, 1981; Schunk & Han-
son, 1985). In addition, Salomon (1984) examined the relationship
between sixth grade students’ self-efficacy for learning from text and
both mental effort and achievement. The self-efficacy of students who
were exposed to the print material were positively associated with men-
tal effort and achievement. That is, as students’ confidence in their abil-
52 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

ity to learn from the print material increased, so did their perceived
mental effort to complete the task.
Self-efficacy has also been consistently associated with levels of persis-
tence (Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent, & Larivée, 1991; Multon, Brown, &
Lent, 1991; Schunk, 1981). When they view a task as difficult, students
with higher self-efficacy tend to be more persistent than are students with
lower self-efficacy. Zimmerman and Ringle (1981) assigned children to
either an optimistic or a pessimistic model condition, wherein the chil-
dren observed an adult attempt the solution of an unsolvable wire puzzle.
The optimistic model expressed confidence about solving the puzzle (e.g.,
“I am sure I can separate these wires; I just have to keep trying different
ways, and then I will find the right one”) whereas the pessimistic model
expressed concern about solving it (e.g., “I don’t think I can separate
these wires; I have tried many different ways and nothing seems to work”).
Students in the optimistic condition felt more efficacious about being able
to solve a similar puzzle and persisted longer than did students in the
pessimistic group during an opportunity to solve the problem. The opti-
mistic students also persisted longer in solving an embedded word prob-
lem. This study demonstrated that vicariously-induced self-efficacy not
only enhanced persistence on a similar motoric puzzle but also facilitated
transfer in persistence to a verbal puzzle within the same experimental
context. In addition to its effects on persistence, self-efficacy has been
shown to be predictive of students’ choice of activities (Bandura &
Schunk, 1981; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999).

Academic Achievement

Although student motivation is an important issue, the bottom line

often entails improving students’ academic skills and maximizing their
overall performance in school. It is widely accepted that students’ aca-
demic success is influenced primarily by their cognitive abilities. That is,
students with great intellectual potential will often succeed at a higher
level than will students with lower ability. However, given that the corre-
lation between IQ and achievement is typically only in the moderate
range, it seems reasonable to suggest that cognitive potential does not
always translate into attained success. Just as there are intellectually
gifted individuals who do not perform well, there exist many lower abil-
ity students who perform at or above age or grade expectations.
Although it is clear that many variables interact to produce this phe-
nomenon, we will consider the role that self-efficacy perceptions play in
determining how well individuals perform academically.
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 53

Merely possessing knowledge and skills does not mean that one will
use them effectively under difficult conditions (Bandura, 1993). Stu-
dents often encounter obstacles during learning. These can include
noisy study environments, disruptive thoughts, negative emotional reac-
tions, and poor organization skills. Those who are more self-efficacious
about being able to effectively manage and cope with these circum-
stances are expected to have a higher probability of succeeding, even if
others have the same inherent ability or skill level. Collins (1982) stud-
ied students of high or low perceived math self-efficacy within each of
three levels of math ability: high, intermediate, and low. At each level of
math ability, students who were assured of their self-efficacy discarded
faulty solution strategies more quickly, reworked more failed problems,
and achieved higher math performance than did students who were low
in their sense of self-efficacy. Thus, self-efficacy was a better predictor of
positive attitudes to mathematics than was actual ability. Similar results
were reported by Bouffard-Bouchard (1990) who experimentally
increased the self-efficacy of students at two levels of ability on a novel
problem-solving task. The students’ self-efficacy was varied through
arbitrary feedback. Regardless of their pretest level of ability, students
whose self-efficacy was raised used more effective strategies and were
more successful in their problem solving than students whose self-effi-
cacy was lowered. These studies revealed that students’ self-efficacy
beliefs contribute to academic performance over and above the effects
of their ability (Bandura, 1993).
There is much evidence documenting the significant relation between
self-efficacy beliefs and achievement in academic settings (Bandura,
1997; Multon et al., 1991; Schunk, 1981; Schunk & Miller, 2002), ath-
letics (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1996), health-promoting behavior, and
coping skills. In the academic domain, Multon et al. (1991) meta-ana-
lyzed results of studies conducted between 1977 and 1988 to examine
the effect of efficacy beliefs on academic achievement. The studies
assessed academic performance in a variety of ways, including basic cog-
nitive skills, academic course work, and standardized tests, and they
were diverse in terms of sample and experimental design. Multon et al.
reported an overall effect size of 0.38, indicating that self-efficacy
accounted for approximately 14% of the variance in students’ academic
performance. Self-efficacy was most predictive of academic accomplish-
ments when posttreatment efficacy beliefs were used as predictors.
Thus, assessing students’ efficacy prior to instruction, although impor-
tant, will not be as predictive of academic achievement as measuring
these beliefs following instruction or modeling experiences.
Path analytic studies have shown that self-efficacy has a direct effect on
students’ academic performance across academic domains such as writing
54 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

and mathematics (Pajares & Miller, 1994; Schunk, 1981; Zimmerman &
Bandura, 1994). For example, Pajares and Kranzler (1995) investigated the
impact of mathematics self-efficacy and general aptitude on the mathemat-
ics problem-solving skills of high school students. The researchers wanted
to assess the unique contribution made by self-efficacy to the prediction of
academic achievement when a measure of general intelligence, or g, was
included in the model. The path model included mathematics self-efficacy,
general mental ability, math anxiety, high school math level, and gender.
Although it is widely recognized that the g factor is a strong predictor of
academic performance, results revealed that self-efficacy and general men-
tal ability had comparable direct effects on students’ math problem-solving
skills. Thus, even when the effects of general cognitive ability are con-
trolled, adolescents’ perceptions of efficacy are able to account for unique
variance in an academic outcome. Self-efficacy also mediated the effects of
general cognitive ability and math anxiety on overall math performance.

Academic and Personal Development

To understand the role of self-efficacy perceptions on adolescents’

academic and personal development, Bandura and his colleagues at the
University of Rome have undertaken a series of ecological studies (e.g.,
Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996, 2001). The studies
have included a wide network of parent, student, and teacher mea-
sures. Bandura (1997) cautioned against adopting narrow measures of
either self-efficacy or personal functioning when broad developmental
issues are of interest. From a social cognitive perspective, students’ aca-
demic functioning is influenced by a number of nonacademic but
school-related context variables as well as by academic variables. For
example, students who cannot form and maintain positive social rela-
tionships with classmates or who have trouble self-regulating their
behavior will often suffer academically as well as socially and person-
ally. Three general types of students’ efficacy beliefs were investigated:
social functioning (e.g., forming and maintaining peer relationships),
personal self-regulatory functioning (e.g., resisting peer pressure to
engage in high risk activities like drugs and alcohol), and academic
functioning (e.g., self-regulating learning and mastering various types
of subject matter). Also included were a wide range of nonacademic
measures of adolescent functioning (e.g., depression, problem behav-
iors, moral disengagement, prosocial behavior, and peer preferences) as
well as academic achievement measures. In addition to these student
measures, parental self-efficacy measures (e.g., ability to influence their
children’s development) and parental academic aspirations for their
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 55

children (e.g., expected performance and amount of schooling) were

included in the research design.
Using a path analysis, Bandura et al. (1996) found that the influence of
the families’ socioeconomic status was entirely mediated through parents’
academic aspirations and children’s prosocial behavior, such that the
higher the status of the family, the higher the parents’ academic aspirations
for their children and the greater their children’s pro-social behavior. All
three forms of children’s self-efficacy contributed to academic achieve-
ment, but through different paths of mediating variables. For example,
children’s self-regulatory efficacy influenced achievement directly and by
reducing problem behaviors. Although children’s academic self-efficacy
directly enhanced academic achievement, it also influenced this achieve-
ment indirectly via reductions in depression, increases in pro-social behav-
ior, and increases in the children’s academic aspirations. The children’s
academic aspirations were also influenced directly by their parents’ aca-
demic aspirations. A high degree of pro-social behavior influenced the
children’s peer preferences and prevented them from disengaging their
moral standards or engaging in problem behaviors. The combined vari-
ables in this path model accounted for 58% of the variance in the children’s
academic achievement. This ecological account of children’s academic
development reveals that children who doubt their efficacy reduce their
academic aspirations, experience greater depression, and develop less
prosocial and more problem behavior. Over time, students’ growing doubts
about their intellectual capabilities and the resulting deficiencies in aca-
demic skill are likely to foreclose occupational avenues for them.
In a subsequent study of these children’s career choices, Bandura et al.
(2001) studied the influence of the children’s three general types of self-
efficacy, academic aspirations, and academic achievement on their efficacy
perceptions regarding six specific career paths (science-technology, educa-
tion-medical, literary-art, social service, military-police, and agricultural-
horticultural). These types of occupational self-efficacy proved to be key
determinants of the children’s career choices. Interestingly, students’ aca-
demic achievements did not directly predict their career choice but rather
were mediated via their occupational self-efficacy beliefs. Clearly self-effi-
cacy play a major role in students’ academic and career development.

DOES ENHANCING SELF-EFFICACY EMPOWER STUDENTS

TO BECOME MORE SELF-DIRECTED,
INDEPENDENT LEARNERS?
The primary goals of secondary education are to teach students content
knowledge in a particular subject area and to build students’ reading,
writing, and arithmetic skills. Given the proliferation of federal mandates
56 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

for establishing minimum academic proficiency levels and statewide tests

for assessing students’ academic skills, it is understandable that education
focus intensely in these areas. However, a broader, more long-term goal of
secondary education should involve empowering students to become
independent, self-regulated learners. When students graduate from high
school and go on to college or enter the workforce, one hopes they feel a
sense of personal agency for effectively and responsibly managing their
own behavior and acting on the world in which they live. Individuals who
seek to proactively and efficiently manage their lives to achieve self-set
goals are often called self-regulated learners. Self-regulated individuals
naturally feel empowered because of their adaptive self-motivational
beliefs, particularly with regard to their perceptions of personal capability.
In this section, we will explore the reciprocal links between students’ self-
efficacy and their self-regulated behaviors.
From a social cognitive perspective, self-regulation has been defined as
self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that are planned and cycli-
cally adapted based on performance feedback to attain self-set goals (Zim-
merman, 2000). It is a complex, multi-faceted process that integrates
several motivational and self-processes (see Figure 2.1). These motiva-
tional and self-processes are hypothesized to operate in a cyclical feed-
back loop, whereby a learner gathers and uses feedback information to
make adjustments during current and future learning attempts (Zimmer-
man, 2000). This cyclical loop includes three general phases: forethought
(processes that precede efforts to act), performance control (processes
that occur during learning) and self-reflection (processes that occur after
performance). It is hypothesized that forethought processes influence
performance control phase processes, which in turn influence self-reflec-
tion phase processes. A cycle is complete when the self-reflection pro-
cesses influence forethought processes during a subsequent learning
attempt. Self-efficacy beliefs exist within this system of self-regulatory
beliefs and processes. These beliefs are critical to the forethought phase
process because it can sustain high levels of motivation and resiliency in
learners when they encounter obstacles or difficulties in learning. It
should be noted that, although self-efficacy is presented as a forethought
process, it has direct influences on many of the self-regulation processes
throughout the entire cyclical feedback loop. We will review the relation-
ship between students’ self-efficacy and key forethought phase processes
(e.g., goal setting, strategic planning, self-motivational beliefs), perfor-
mance control phase processes (e.g., self-observation, strategy use) and
self-reflection phase processes (e.g., self-evaluative standards, attribu-
tions).
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 57

Performance Phase
Self-Control
Task strategies
Imagery
Self-Instruction
Attention focusing
Self-Observation
Metacognitive monitoring
Self-recording

Forethought Phase Self-Reflection Phase

Task Analysis
Goal setting Self-Judgment
Strategic planning Self-evaluation
Sources of Self-Motivation Causal attributions
Self-efficacy Self-Reaction
Task interest/value Adaptive inferences
Outcome Expectations Satisfactions

Source: Zimmerman and Campillo (2003, p. 239), Reprinted with permission.

Figure 2.1 Phases and subprocesses of self-regulation.

Forethought Phase Processes

Goal-Setting
Goal-setting has been defined as deciding on specific outcomes of
learning or performance, such as learning the steps of a writing strategy
or achieving a grade of 100 on a science test (Locke & Latham, 1990).
Beliefs of personal capabilities affect the type of goals that individuals
select and their commitment to them (Zimmerman, 1995). For example,
when individuals feel capable of performing a particular task, they are
more likely to set challenging and specific goals (Bandura, 1986; Zimmer-
man, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). In a study with adolescent bas-
ketball players, Cleary and Zimmerman (2001) investigated self-efficacy
differences between expert, non-expert, and novice players as well as the
relationship between self-efficacy and other self-regulatory processes.
Participants were asked to rate their self-efficacy for making two free-
throw shots in a row as well as to identify any goals they had before prac-
ticing their free-throws. Individuals who were highly confident about
making the free-throws tended to set more specific outcome goals (e.g., “to
make 10 out of 10 shots”), whereas those who were not confident tended
to set vague outcome goals (e.g., “to make baskets”). Specific goals are
58 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

advantageous because they enable one to evaluate personal progress

more effectively.
Other studies have examined the causal effect of self-efficacy on goal-
setting and academic achievement (Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). Zim-
merman et al. (1992) performed a path analysis to analyze the causal
effects of several variables, such as prior grades, parent grade goals, stu-
dent grade goals, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, and self-efficacy
for academic achievement on high school students’ grades in social stud-
ies. Although self-efficacy for academic achievement directly predicted
students’ social studies grades, it also had a direct effect on the goals that
students set for themselves. That is, individuals who were highly confident
in their ability to earn a high grade were more likely to set challenging aca-
demic goals. These studies are important because they suggest that, as
perceptions of capability increase, one will likely set more specific, chal-
lenging goals, the types of goals that lead to the most positive outcomes
(Locke & Latham, 1990).
Although self-efficacy beliefs can influence self-regulation processes,
this relationship is reciprocal in that manipulating self-regulation pro-
cesses can also produce changes in one’s self-perceptions. Goal-setting
influences self-efficacy perceptions because it enables learners to evaluate
goal progress and personal mastery over tasks (Schunk & Miller, 2002).
Several experimental studies using academic and athletic tasks have
shown that the types of goals students set for themselves directly influence
their self-efficacy and achievement (Schunk & Rice, 1989, 1991). Schunk
and Swartz (1993) conducted one of the first studies to assess how process
goals influenced student writing skills and self-efficacy perceptions.
Grade 5 students were randomly assigned to different writing strategy
instructional groups based on type of goal (process, product, or general
goals). Students who set process goals (i.e., focus on executing the writing
strategy) exhibited higher perceptions of writing self-efficacy than did stu-
dents who set general goals (i.e., do your best). When a progress feedback
condition was given to some of the students in the process goal group,
they exhibited more adaptive efficacy beliefs than did students in either
the product goal or general goal conditions.
In a study of athletic functioning in adolescent girls, Zimmerman and
Kitsantas (1996) compared the effects of process and outcome goals on
the dart skill, self-efficacy, and level of satisfaction of the novice dart-
throwers. Girls were randomly assigned to one of four conditions based
on type of goals (process or outcome) and self-recording (present or
absent). All participants received identical throwing instructions, but the
process goal group was instructed to focus on the dart-throwing strategy
while practicing. In reference to the goal-setting effects, girls who were in
the process goal group had higher dart-throwing scores and self-efficacy
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 59

perceptions than did the girls who set outcome goals (i.e., to obtain the
highest score).
These studies suggest that encouraging adolescent students to set pro-
cess goals will have both achievement and motivational advantages because
it directs attention to executing the essential aspects of a particular task.
Process goals encourage learners to keep track of how well they perform a
strategy, evaluate goal progress, and judge perceptions of competence.

Strategic Planning
Before students can engage in academic pursuits, they must learn
methods that are appropriate for a particular task within a specific con-
text (Zimmerman, 2000). Strategies can be thought of as purposive per-
sonal processes and actions directed at acquiring knowledge or skills.
They are important because they represent the tools with which individu-
als learn and improve their performance and level of skill. A variety of
descriptive studies have investigated the relationship between use of
learning strategies and self-efficacy perceptions. Zimmerman and Mar-
tinez-Pons (1990) investigated this with students in Grades 5, 8, and 11.
They hypothesized that measures of self-efficacy would be predictive of
students’ use of self-regulated learning strategies. Verbal self-efficacy
accounted for 18% of the variance in strategy use and was predictive of
using several different types of strategies.
In the study of athletes earlier discussed, Cleary and Zimmerman
(2001) showed that the self-efficacy beliefs of adolescent basketball play-
ers were not just predictive of whether one will use a strategy, but also of
the quality and type of strategy used. Participants were asked to rate their
self-efficacy as well as the strategy that they would use to achieve a shoot-
ing goal during a practice session. Given that the self-efficacy question
was asked prior to the strategy question, the resulting correlation
reflected self-efficacy predicting strategy use. Individuals who were highly
self-efficacious usually selected technique-specific strategies (e.g., “bend
my knees correctly”) to achieve their goals, whereas those who doubted
their capabilities rarely endorsed this type of strategy. The use of these
technique-oriented strategies was important because they directly corre-
sponded to the correct shooting form, thus focusing the individual’s
attention on important shooting form processes rather than on other
external or distracting factors. Although this study does not imply causa-
tion between self-efficacy and strategy use, it does suggest that confident
individuals may tend to use strategies that are specific to the task at hand.
Some experimental studies have established a causal link between self-
efficacy and strategy use (e.g., Schunk & Rice, 1991). Schunk and Swartz
(1993) found that students whose self-efficacy increased as a result of
60 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

goal-setting and progress feedback were more likely to continue to use the
writing strategies effectively in follow-up assessments.

Sources of Self-Motivation

Zimmerman’s model of self-regulation incorporates various motiva-

tional processes such as self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and task
interest or valuing. The model predicts that self-efficacy, being the key
motivational process, will be related to the other motivational processes. A
series of studies conducted with expert and novice athletes (Cleary & Zim-
merman, 2001; Kitsantas & Zimmerman, 2002; Zimmerman & Kitsantas,
1996, 1997) support these predictions. In most of the studies, students’
level of self-efficacy is typically predictive of task interest and of value for
accomplishing future goals (a form of outcome expectations). Pajares and
Miller (1994) used path analysis to study the predictive and mediational
role of college students’ mathematics self-efficacy beliefs. They reported
that self-efficacy beliefs had a direct effect on students’ perceived useful-
ness of mathematics for achieving various life goals. That is, when indi-
viduals were more confident in their personal capabilities in mathematics,
they were more likely to perceive mathematics as being valuable and
important. Although these findings support the premise that different
motivational beliefs are related to each other, at this point the precise
nature of this relationship is not well understood. It is important for
future research to examine the effects of different thresholds of self-effi-
cacy on other motivational beliefs.

Performance Control Phase Processes

Self-Observation
Self-observation (also called self-monitoring) is a performance control
phase process that involves selectively attending to particular aspects of
one’s behavior or performance (Schunk, 1983; Zimmerman & Paulsen,
1995). It is an important process because it helps learners discriminate
between effective and ineffective performances and helps to isolate the
source of error or confusion when one is performing poorly. Similar to
the relationship between self-efficacy and other self-regulation processes,
there is a reciprocal relation between efficacy judgments and self-monitor-
ing behaviors. Individuals with high self-efficacy will often be motivated
to self-monitor and will be more proficient at monitoring their behaviors
during an academic activity (Schunk, 1983; Zimmerman & Paulsen,
1995). Bouffard-Bouchard et al. (1991) examined the effects of efficacy
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 61

beliefs on self-monitoring during a learning activity with junior high and

high school students and reported that students with higher self-efficacy
were better at monitoring their working time, were more persistent, and
were less likely to reject correct hypotheses prematurely than were those
who did not feel as capable.
There is also evidence for self-monitoring processes directly influenc-
ing one’s self-efficacy beliefs. In a classic self-monitoring study, Schunk
(1983) examined whether self-monitoring would influence elementary
school students’ subtraction skills and self-efficacy to solve subtraction
problems. All students received 30-minute training sessions that involved
instruction and individual practice sessions. In addition, some were
taught to self-monitor the number of pages they completed during each
session. The self-monitoring group reported higher self-efficacy for solv-
ing problems and had higher scores on a skills test than did the group
who did not self-monitor. The effects of self-monitoring on self-efficacy
have also been demonstrated in a training study of writing revision (Zim-
merman & Kitsantas, 1999). Adolescent girls who were required to record
specific steps of a text revision strategy exhibited higher levels of writing
skill and self-efficacy than did girls who learned without self-recording.

Self-Reflection Processes

Self-Evaluation
Self-efficacy beliefs not only influence the goals students set for them-
selves but also their evaluative reactions of goal progress. The role of self-
efficacy beliefs concerning the academic attainment and regulation of writ-
ing, academic goals, and self-standards in the development of writing pro-
ficiency was studied with college freshmen using path analysis
(Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). Two scales were developed to measure
self-efficacy. The first assessed beliefs about personal capability to regulate
writing activities (e.g., “I can rewrite my wordy or confusing sentences
clearly”), and the second asked students to rate the strength of their belief
that they could attain particular achievement outcomes (e.g., an A- in the
course). Students’ self-evaluative standards were assessed in terms of their
level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for different writing grades. The key
result was the causal link between the students’ self-regulatory self-efficacy
for writing with their personal standards of performance. Students who felt
more confident in their ability to regulate the writing process set high per-
sonal standards for the quality of their writing and thus were more easily
dissatisfied than were students who possessed low self-efficacy.
Conversely, the process of self-evaluating one’s abilities or one’s
progress in strategy or skill acquisition is important for cultivating strong
62 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

self-efficacy (Schunk, 2003). It is the cognitive appraisal of one’s personal

improvement or progress that will ultimately lead to fluctuations in one’s
capability judgments. For example, if a student is not satisfied with her
performance on a math test but believes that her future performance
could be improved by adjusting ineffective strategies, then her self-effi-
cacy beliefs will not diminish. This phenomenon has been demonstrated
in experimental studies involving the use of self-monitored information
about performance processes to evaluate one’s skill on a particular task
(Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999).

Attributions
Efficacy beliefs are influenced by a variety of factors such as prior accom-
plishments and vicarious experiences. Although mastery experiences are
the strongest source of self-efficacy, cognitive analysis of one’s performance
experiences is a key mediating factor for changing capability judgments.
From a self-regulatory perspective, after students perform a task or an
activity, they will often evaluate or reflect cognitively on the perceived
causes of that performance. These causes are termed causal attributions
(Zimmerman, 2000). Attribution theorists contend that students’ percep-
tions of the causes of their academic successes and failures determine their
expectancies for future performance (Weiner, 1986). For example, Jen’s
motivation would be heightened if she attributed her poor performance in
math to internal, controllable factors such as effort and strategy use, but it
would decrease if she attributed it to uncontrollable factors such as luck or
ability (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2001; Clifford, 1986).
As with most self-regulatory processes, there is empirical evidence
showing a reciprocal relationship between students’ causal attributions
and their perceptions of personal efficacy. That is, highly efficacious stu-
dents believe performance outcomes to be personally controllable
(Bandura, 1997), so they tend to attribute failure to factors that they can
change. Conversely, students with low self-efficacy attribute failure to
uncontrollable factors, thereby increasing feelings of despair and help-
lessness (Silver, Mitchell, & Gist, 1989). These types of attributions are
particularly important because they encourage students to make adaptive
changes or self-adjustments to their learning methods following failure or
poor performances. In addition, students who are provided strategy or
effort feedback following performance on academic tasks often experi-
ence increases in their personal efficacy (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002;
Schunk & Rice, 1991). In the following section, we consider the role of
attribution as well as other forms of self-regulatory training on students’
self-efficacy and academic performance.
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 63

HOW CAN WE ENHANCE ADOLESCENT STUDENTS’ SELF-

EFFICACY PERCEPTIONS?

Although it is important for parents and educators to understand the

nature and role of self-efficacy in children’s and adolescents’ academic
functioning, the ultimate question is how to cultivate or enhance students’
perceptions of personal agency. The previous section on the reciprocal
relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and self-regulatory processes
showed that training students in self-regulation processes such as goal set-
ting, self-monitoring, and strategic planning can increase their confi-
dence levels to perform specific tasks in school. These interventions can
be loosely categorized under one of the four sources of self-efficacy as
identified by Bandura (1986). He argued that an individual’s self-efficacy
perceptions are influenced by one’s prior accomplishments/mastery, phys-
iological reactions, vicarious experiences, and forms of persuasion.
Personal mastery experiences, which involve one’s accomplishments,
are the strongest source of enhancing perceptions of personal efficacy
(Bandura, 1997; Schunk, 2003). There are numerous studies showing that
as one’s mastery or proficiency at an activity increases, so does one’s self-
efficacy (Schunk, 1981; Schunk & Schwartz, 1993; Zimmerman & Kitsan-
tas, 1996). In general, frequent successes lead to higher self-efficacy, and
consistent failure experiences usually lower it. However, this general rule
of thumb requires qualification. Accomplishments are interpreted in light
of one’s self-regulatory processes, such as self-evaluations, attributions,
strategy use, and goal setting. For example, self-efficacy percepts depend
on how an individual evaluates the circumstances and factors surrounding
the accomplishments (Bandura, 1986; Schunk & Pajares, 2004). If a stu-
dent receives a 95% on a math test but perceives the test to be easier than
typical math tests, it is unlikely that her efficacy judgments will change.
Conversely, failing her next math test may not adversely affect her self-
efficacy if she believes that an external factor, such as a family emergency,
prevented her from studying and caused her to fail. Similarly, students
who select a strategy to revise an essay and use the strategy as a process
goal to guide and self-monitor learning are less likely to attribute poor
results to fixed abilities and more likely to sustain their self-efficacy to ulti-
mately master the task (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999). The second
source of self-efficacy, physiological reactions, can also influence how an
individual makes an efficacy judgment. If a student gets extremely anx-
ious during math activities, she may interpret her rapid heart rate or
sweating palms as indicators of personal ineffectiveness.
An important aspect of social cognitive theory is its assumption that an
individual’s social milieu is a primary determinant of his or her function-
ing, attitudes, and beliefs (Bandura, 1986). Adolescent students do not
64 B. J. ZIMMERMAN and T. J. CLEARY

have to act or engage in an activity to learn or to feel confident in their

abilities. Rather, their sense of efficacy can be either enhanced or lowered
by the behaviors and/or feedback given by important individuals in their
lives such as parents, teachers, counselors, and peers. Social agents pro-
mote positive perceptions of efficacy in adolescents by either using vari-
ous forms of verbal persuasion (e.g., encouragement, progress feedback)
or by modeling specific strategies, behaviors, or thoughts.
Adolescents will often judge their level of self-efficacy through vicari-
ous experiences, most notably modeling, which has been defined as the
behavioral, cognitive, and affective changes resulting from observing
other individuals perform a behavior (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Model-
ing is one of the most important ways to promote learning and self-effi-
cacy (Schunk, 1981, 2003; Schunk & Hanson, 1985). The impact of a
model on self-efficacy beliefs will be strongest when observers believe that
they can be successful if they follow the model’s behaviors and if they
believe they are similar to the model in terms of age, ability, and gender
(Schunk, 1987; Schunk, Hanson, & Cox, 1987). It should also be noted
that models can be different types of individuals (e.g., peers and adults),
can take various forms (e.g., live models and symbolic models), and can
be used in different formats (e.g., coping and mastery models). Coping
models, who display confidence and adaptation when confronting errors
in learning are significantly more effective in sustaining students’ percep-
tions of self-efficacy than are mastery models who perform without errors
(Kitsantas, Zimmerman, & Cleary, 2000; Schunk et al., 1987; Schunk &
Hanson, 1985; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2002).
Social persuasion is another source of information that adolescents use
to shape and form perceptions of personal capability. Although encourag-
ing comments (e.g., “I know you can do it”) and reassuring statements
from a parent or teacher (e.g., “You will do better next time”) may help
struggling students sustain their motivation in the short-term, the effects
of such statements will be short-lived if the student is consistently unable
to attain perceived successes. However, social agents can play a key role in
cultivating more long-lasting changes in adolescents’ self-efficacy beliefs
for academic tasks by providing them with feedback linking performance
progress with strategy use (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004, Schunk & Rice,
1991; Schunk & Swartz, 1993). Social feedback is important not only for
its impact on self-efficacy beliefs but also because it focuses a student’s
attention on important learning processes. It also enables students to
make adaptive self-reflections, such as evaluating their performance in
relation to mastery goals and attributing poor performances to ineffective
strategy use (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004; Zimmerman, 2000). Thinking
in the “language of strategies” motivates adolescents because they begin
 Adolescents’ Development of Personal Agency 65

to view success and failures in terms of successfully using “controllable”

strategies rather than innate, unchangeable factors such as ability.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents’ perceptions of efficacy play a major role in their transition

from childhood dependency to adulthood self-sufficiency. Ecologically-
oriented research has shown that adolescents’ self-efficacy beliefs emerge
from a rich and complex interplay of forces in which these beliefs are both
causes and effects of personal and academic functioning as well as future
occupational choices. Bandura (1997) hypothesized that self-efficacy
beliefs interact with many other determinants of academic functioning—
personal, contextual, and behavioral. For this reason, self-efficacy mea-
sures are designed to reveal the task-, condition-, and context-specificity
of personal competence beliefs and to be sensitive to changes in function-
ing. Although the importance of self-efficacy is now well established, the
magnitude of its effect varies considerably depending on other variables.
Adolescents’ sense of personal efficacy is especially influenced by their
capability to self-regulate their functioning, such as setting optimal goals,
implementing effective strategies, self-monitoring accurately, self-evaluat-
ing using appropriate criteria, and attributing causation to adaptable pro-
cesses. When training interventions are designed to enhance these and
other academic self-regulatory functions, adolescents are significantly
empowered to make this vital developmental transition.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to thank Frank Pajares and Tim Urdan for their helpful
comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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