Interrelations between Self-esteem and Personal Self-efficacy in Educational Contexts: An Empirical Study

The present investigation extends previous studies, situating self-esteem within Bandura's (1986, 1997) social cognitive theory. Our theoretical-conceptual model posits the impacts of the four major informational sources (e.g., enactive learning experience) on self-esteem; this postulation would, in part, advance our understanding into the nature of self-esteem. Furthermore, self-esteem is hypothesized to relate positively to the three levels of personal self-efficacy beliefs: global, course, and task. Academic engagement and achievement outcome, in turn, are postulated as adaptive outcomes of both self-esteem and self-efficacy. 350 12th grade students (200 girls, 152 boys) participated in this correlational study, and responded to a suite of Likert-scale inventories. We used causal modeling procedures to ascertain and decompose the direct and indirect effects. Some notable findings were established, which formulate a consideration for further advancement - for example, the direct influences from three of the four sources on self-esteem, and the impact of self-esteem on global self-efficacy.