Enhancing academic self-efficacy and performance among fourth year psychology students: Findings from a short educational intervention

Academic self-efficacy is the degree to which students believe they are capable of learning or accomplishing an academic task within a specific area of education. High academic self-efficacy has been associated with positive education outcomes such as enhanced learning, motivation, self-determination, and ultimately academic performance. The current study designed, implemented and evaluated an educational intervention to enhance the academic self-efficacy and performance of 21 psychology students enrolled in a group supervised Honours course, the outcome being a thesis dissertation. Students completed pre-intervention surveys in class half way through the course and then another survey after the 8-week intervention. Measures of self-efficacy (based on student responses) were similar over the two assessments. Furthermore, self-efficacy did not predict academic outcomes as determined by two independent examiners’ final marks on their thesis. Findings are discussed in relation to limitations of the data and challenges faced when implementing interventions aimed to enhance academic self-efficacy