Basic Research on Self-Efficacy, Learning Strategies, and Study Results at the Learning Scene of Science

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the structure of self-efficacy in junior and senior high school science education. In order to analyze the relation between the learner's self-efficacy, learning strategies, and the results of their study at the learning scene of science, the researcher developed the Learning Strategies Scale for Science Education (LSSSE), a simplified version of the Self-Efficacy Scale for Science Education (SESSE-S), an improved version of the Metacognition Scale of Cognitive Strategies (MSCS Ver. 2) , and the Relatedness Scale to the Circumference at Learning Scene (RSCL). These four scales were used in a research project involving 547 junior and senior high school students. The findings of this research are as follows: 1. "Elaboration strategies" and "organizational strategies" correlate closely with control and agency beliefs for effort and ability, which are important concepts of self-efficacy, and with "self-appraisal" and "self-management" of the metacognitive strategies. Consequently, the learning strategy can be regarded as an important concept of self-efficacy in science learning. 2. "Expectations by others" of relatedness to the circumference at the learning scene correlates with control and agency beliefs for effort. Moreover, agency beliefs for the teacher correlate with every component of self-efficacy. 3. Students who get high grades in science appear to have a great ability in agency beliefs for effort, self-management in the "planning of the problem solution" and "processing of information on the problem solution." They also seem to have a high ability in "elaboration strategies" for learning and "organizational strategies." These findings suggest some new possibilities for improving learners' self-efficacy.