ABSTRACT
Although teachers have long recognized, in a common-sense way, the need to build up students’ confidence, the emphasis on learners’ self-image and sense of self-efficacy are relatively modern themes in educational psychology, reflecting the growth of humanistic theories in particular and the concern with ‘affect’ (feelings) in general. The importance of the self-concept to students’ behaviour and performance is now widely recognized and the phrase ‘emotional intelligence’ has recently entered the vocabulary as well (see Notes). Self-belief and self-efficacy can be seen as ‘meta’
aspects of learning in that they represent general views of oneself, but since they may also relate to specific tasks (‘I’m hopeless at X…’) or situations (‘I don’t belong in this class/course/place’) they are related here to motivation (Section 7) and reward (Section 9).
