Associations between vocational students’ perceptions of goal structures, mastery goals, and self-efficacy in five subjects—practical relevance as a potential mediator

Context-related problems and university students’ dropout intentions—the buffering effect of personal best goals

“…Although the choice of these two predictors was theoretically justified and empirically supported by the study's findings, further research is encouraged to examine the effects of other contextual characteristics, such as institutional culture or motivational climate (e.g., Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2013;Bardach et al 2019a;Bardach 2019b), and other individual characteristics. With regard to individual characteristics, it might be particularly illuminating to expand the scope to specific personality traits, such as self-compassion (e.g., Patzak et al 2017), or motivational facets not yet considered in research on university dropout, such as implicit theories or achievement goals (e.g., Bardach et al 2019c;Darnon et al 2018).…”

The role of the learning environment in adolescents’ motivational development

“…These findings might further highlight the role of an ideal fit between students' prerequisites and the learning material and that they enjoy differentiated instruction. Regarding Bandura's (1997) sources of self-efficacy, enactive mastery experience is supposed be a major determinant of high self-efficacy. Differentiated instruction as provided by the SDL can thus support such enactive mastery experience.…”

“…Self-efficacy can be defined as the individual evaluation of capability to perform and succeed in certain behaviors (Bandura, 1997). Contrary to other capability beliefs, self-efficacy places a stronger focus on the individual conviction to be able to succeed rather than to evaluate individual prerequisites (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003).…”

“…While research on self-efficacy has mainly been domain specific, there has also been a growing research body concerning higher-order manifestations of self-efficacy that subsume domain specificity in favor of more overarching generalizations (e.g., Caroli, 2014). Bardach et al (2019) conclude that differences in higher-order factors such as general self-efficacy might even represent stronger effects. This might be particularly true since domain-specific differences often cancel each other out.…”

“…This might be particularly true since domain-specific differences often cancel each other out. Self-efficacy has been shown to be beneficial for numerous educational outcomes such as increased achievement, persistence and effort, and self-regulation as well as reduced test anxiety (Tang & Westwood, 2007;Kitsantas & Zimmerman, 2008;Salami & Ogundokun, 2009;Schnell et al, 2015;Hoigaard et al, 2015;Raufelder & Ringeisen, 2016;Rossi et al, 2020) and is highly contextualized (Bandura, 1997). Individuals develop an "enduring interest in activities at which they feel efficacious and from which they derive self-satisfaction" (Bandura, 1997, p. 219).…”