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Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in their own capabilities to organise and execute action required to manage a particular situation (Bandura, 1995). Efficacy beliefs influence how people think and feel about themselves which in term influences action. Bandura suggests that such beliefs contribute significantly to motivation and achievement, and appear to have four main forms of influence: they are through mastery of experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion and by understanding of the physical state.

The ability to master experiences appears to provide authentic evidence to an individual that they do have the ability to succeed in a particular situation (Bandura, 1982; Gist, 1989) and builds up an individual’s history of success. Failures can undermine personal efficacy towards a particular activity especially if failure occurs before an individual has built up a history of success. Providing mastery experiences involves cognitive, behavioural and personal tools (i.e., self regulation) for managing appropriate actions in a particular situation. Once people have achieved a sense that they have the ability to succeed, they are more resilient to setbacks.

Another way of improving an individual’s self-efficacy towards a particular activity is by vicarious experiences, mediated by social models. When people see similar people to themselves succeeding and persevering, they may become convinced that they too will succeed. However, observations of failures or exposure to people who are not perceived as being peers or similar, can undermine self-efficacy. An example of this is exposing a group of nursing students to a successful mainstream science student. They may not relate to the science student who chooses to study science, and then may reinforce negative attitudes. A successful model can assist those struggling with low self-efficacy perceptions by providing effective skills and strategies that enabled them to manage the environmental demands.

Social persuasion is another way to improve a person’s perception of their ability in a given situation. People who are encouraged (via verbal feedback) tend to give the situation more effort compared to people who have self-doubts and little support (Litt, 1988). However, it is important that this feedback is realistic as over

inflated encouragement can lead to disappointment. People who have self-doubt tend to constrict their activities, avoid challenges and give up quickly (Bandura, 1995). To improve self-efficacy it is important to raise people’s beliefs in their own capabilities but also to provide structure where they can succeed and measure success in terms of improvement, not necessarily against others.

The influence of physiological and emotional states, such as reaction to stress, is another important factor in building up self-efficacy (Bandura, 1995). Some people may interpret a stress reaction as a validation of poor performance. Mood has an obvious influence where a person in a positive mood may be more resilient and motivated compared to a person who is despondent (Kavanagh & Bower, 1985). Hence, to improve self-efficacy towards a particular task, people have to know what they are in for – for instance, in a physical activity, sore muscles and aches and pains may be part of the process that they will need to work through. Sleep deprivation due to study habits may negatively affect mood for example. If a person can be supported to interpret their bodily signals positively, it can play an influential role in preparing the person. People’s beliefs in their own coping abilities affect how much stress or depression they feel when they are in difficult situations.

Some nursing schools have used the concept of self-efficacy towards performing science tasks to design a tool to attempt to predict nursing students’ academic performance in first year science subjects (Andrew, 1998). After analysis they report that students that were the most successful in science tended to have a higher mean school biology score, than a less successful group. This may have had something to do with their successes in school biology providing them with mastery experiences where they could visualise being successful at science, resulting in greater confidence in their abilities to engage with the science material. This is in agreement with other studies that found academic success in senior high school science was linked to success in the nursing science courses (Davies et al., 2000; Jordan et al., 1999; Van Rooyen et al., 2006; Wharrad et al., 1994). However, some studies have found that success in nursing science was not linked to senior high school science success – for example, mature age students with no background in science are able to perform as well as those who had passed publicly-examined biology at school (Caon & Treagust, 1993). This may

be explained if these students were found to have high levels of self-efficacy towards-using-science and a positive attitude-towards-science.

Motivation and confidence in a subject tends to support successful learning outcomes as students who were successful earlier on may have more confidence and motivation to remain successful in later endeavours. Caon and Treagust (1993) report that students who were unsuccessful in their science courses tended to be those with a low opinion of their ability in science and who were not convinced of the relevance of it to nursing. This concept of ‘self-efficacy’ can be described as a personal expectation about ones’ ability to successfully perform a specific task or behaviour, and the measurement of self-efficacy may then be predictive of academic success (Bandura, 1986).

Wilke (2003) found that students’ confidence towards learning physiology was improved when they were taught using active learning techniques. It was found that the students taught using these techniques acquired significantly more content knowledge and confidence than those students in the control group (who were taught using traditional didactic methods). These active learning techniques probably influenced the students’ self-efficacy towards the physiology tasks as they provided mastery and vicarious experience, probably within an encouraging social context. Science self-efficacy is reportedly influenced by language and mathematical ability as well as academic attitudes (Harvey & McMurray, 1994), and students with a low mean academic self-efficacy and low grade point average were found to be more likely to withdraw from nursing courses. A study by Andrew (1998) suggests that nursing students were not confident in performing many science tasks, particularly those involving physics and mathematics, and that student motivation and academic performance appears to be influenced by the student’s own personal judgements. However, it has been suggested that student attitude-towards-science in fact is not easily changed (Schibeci, 1989). This implies that, for example, a student who has a personal judgement that science is boring, hard or irrelevant, may have difficulty changing their attitude, and becoming confident and motivated. Interestingly, self-efficacy towards a particular task has been shown not to be influenced by other variables such as self-esteem. Lent, Larkin and Brown (1986) found no correlation between science self-efficacy and general self-esteem in undergraduate science students. Subject

examinations that are designed specifically to be easy to pass and therefore are intended to build students’ confidence about their ability and thus increase their self-efficacy for content are reported to be effective interventions (Chang & Bell, 2002). This has relevance for the education of nurses as many science courses are assessed by examinations (see Chapter Five) – when possibly, tests and examinations should be being used to build confidence in the student’s ability to engage in the subject material, enhancing their self-efficacy towards using science in nursing by focusing on the student development process, as opposed to what the student can recall (the product of the examination).

People who have high self-efficacy tend to set high goals and commit to them and visualise positive outcomes and scenarios (Bandura, 1995). People with self-doubt tend to visualise failure scenarios. People who regard themselves as having high efficacy attribute their failures to not enough effort or some other situation, whereas those with low self-efficacy tend to regard failure as being due to their low ability. Realistic and achievable goal setting is therefore an important part of increasing self-efficacy towards particular activities

Science is a subject that many students who are considering becoming nurses may not have had success in before and they may have difficulty visualising themselves as being successful at science tasks. Self-efficacy is a concept that relates to an individual’s belief in their own capabilities to manage a particular situation (such as study or use science) and as such, an understanding of some of the factors which positively influence science self-efficacy may contribute towards nursing students being more successful in their science courses or being more confident in using science knowledge in their clinical practice.