Impact of Motivation, Engagement, and Self-Efficacy on Students

This report delves into the critical roles of motivation, engagement, and self-efficacy in student academic success within higher education. It examines various motivational theories, including attributional and self-determination theories, and their influence on student behavior. The report explores the concept of self-efficacy and its impact on students' beliefs and thoughts, highlighting factors that affect it. It also discusses student engagement, its importance, and its dimensions, referencing the flow theory and other frameworks. The analysis considers how motivation, self-efficacy, and engagement interrelate and influence learning outcomes, including a review of studies on high- and low-performing students. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of these factors and the roles of parents and schools in fostering them, while also acknowledging the impact of individual biographies on learning.

Running head:MOTIVATION, ENGAGEMENT AND SELF-EFFICACY
MOTIVATION, ENGAGEMENT AND SELF-EFFICACY
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MOTIVATION, ENGAGEMENT AND SELF-EFFICACY
The influence of self-efficacy, motivation and engagement on student academic success
Introduction
Academic success can indicate different things to different people and success is not
readymade but that it needs to be inculcated to witness the results. Although success among
individual students is perceived according to their unique biographies and social context, it
cannot be denied that an individual student can harness success when they receive motivation
and are taught to become self-sufficient (Christenson, Reschly & Wylie, 2012). The scope of the
current review of literature is to highlight that motivation and self-efficacy are truly important in
facilitating the success rate of students also documenting measures of these two characteristics.
The criteria employed for selecting the additional sources are articles that were concerned with
self-efficacy, motivation and engagement for academic success and the time range selected was
between 2010 and 2018. The database through which the articles were selected are google
scholar and proquest. The paper has been organized to understand the importance of motivation
and self-efficacy in engagement of students, methods for measuring the same, role of motivation
and self-efficacy in learning of foreign language and the role of the parents in motivation.

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MOTIVATION
Theories of motivation: Attributional theories
According to Weiner (2000), there are two related attributional theories of motivation one
is the intrapersonal theory that is related to the self-directed thoughts and the other is the self-
directed emotions (pride, shame and guilt). The interpersonal theory connotes to the beliefs about
the responsibility of different people and the other-directed that impinges on the anger and
sympathy. These two theories of motivation are informed by the metaphors. Attributional theory
in the classroom can lead to the student addressing the aspects of guilt, shame and pride in a
better manner. Attrribution al theory enables in the self-evaluation of the student. In addition, it
enables in the predicting the failure and success of the student.
Theories of motivation: Self-determination theory
In case of online learning, it has been found that there is a high rate of attrition that is
being considered as a pressing issue. According to Chung Chen and Jang (2010), it is important
to investigate about the online learner motivation that includes the antecedents and the various
outcomes. Results from the structural equation modeling have given evidence about the
mediating effects of the requirement for satisfaction between self-determination and contextual
support. Online students perceive satisfaction, autonomy and relatedness that positively affect
the online students in the pursuit of their learning.
Busse & Walter (2013), argues about the first-year foreign languages students who are
enrolled in the German degree course at two of the major universities in United Kingdom. The

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paper is committed in understanding the experiences of the students from the perspective of
motivation. The authors deployed a longitudinal research design and within it they adopted a
mixed-method approach to respond to the time and context-sensitive motivational disposition of
the motivational attributes. The results of the study are that students over the period have
demonstrated increasing proficiency in spoken German language and in addition have shown
their efforts in engaging with the German language. However, this interest and motivation
decreased over the period. This change in the motivation of the students have been said to occur
in consonance with the decrease in changes and the contextual factors that are important for
higher education. The authors recommend pedagogical strategies to neutralize the effects of
decreasing motivation of learning foreign language among the native students.
SELF-EFFICACY
Theory of self-efficacy
The community of Inquiry Framework is considered as an important model that can be
enhanced for creating fuller participation of the responsibilities and roles of the online learners.
There exists a positive relationship between the elements of the COI framework and the elements
of the nascent theoretical construct that is labelled as the learning presence. It is stated that self-
efficacy is related to the behavioural, motivational and the cognitive constructs that is supportive

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of the regulation of the online leaner. As argued by Shea and Bidjerano (2010), online learners
have the potential to contribute the thoreogh and in-depth account of knowledge.
Factors that affect the self-efficacy of students
Researchers who have been working in the field of educational settings are directing
attention to the role of the students, their beliefs and thoughts in the process of learning. Self-
efficacy has been understood as a key element to the social cognitive that is an important
variable as it has implications on the learning and motivation of the students. According to
Dinther, Dochy and Segers (2011), educational programmes are meant at improving the self-
efficacy of the students and there are educational programmes that are premised on social
cognitive theory that can be successful. There are different factors that influence the self-efficacy
of the students and provided evidence for the potency for the central sources of self-efficacy.
ENGAGEMENT OF STUDENTS IN STUDIES
Importance of student engagement
It has been found that student motivation is considered as an important factor in the
learning and achievement of the students in higher education. Student engagement can be
understood as a psychosocial process influenced by the factors of institutional and personal and

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this is embedded within the social context that weaves the socio-cultural perspective with the
behavioural and psychological views. Scholars like Zepke have advocated for the adoption of the
complexity tool for comprehending the student engagement for a dynamic and non-hierarchical
framework that does not incorporate the possible antecedents. The student will respond to the
enthusiastic teaching pedagogy of the teacher based on their expectations. The different
dimensions of the student engagement are dependent on one another.
Student engagement from the perspective of flow theory
Researchers have been concerned with some of the challenges faced by teachers and
students in the contemporary context. Some of the problems that have been faced by the teachers
are the underachievement of the students as well as their behavioural, ;earning and the emotional
challenges that culminate to high drop-out rate among the students. Drop-out of students from
the school is related to their disengagement. There has been growing awareness about the
engagement of students in higher education in the outcomes of learning and achievement.
Scholars have discussed about the phenomenological framework of understanding of high-
involvement of students in the classroom. Engagement of students towards higher education may
be related to the perceive control and instruction. Instructional relevance plays an important role
in engaging students to be more authentic with their academic work that is concerned with the
meaningful inquiry to resolve real life problems in the classroom and beyond the space of
classroom. Engagement of students in the classroom is further related to the way students
perceive their learning activities and the role of positive emotions in the classroom.
Kim, Park, Huynh and Schuermann, (2017) in their paper investigated about the ways
the high-performers and the low performer have distinction in terms of their engagement and

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motivation in the large format general education geography. Around one hundred students
participated in the study. However, the study shows that this difference between the high and low
level performances is pertained to motivation and not engagement. The low performer group
demonstrated a decrease in the attention whereas in case of the high-performance group they
were quite attentive in the classroom. It was further reported that the satisfaction and confidence
of the low performer group plummeted as there was no evident change in case of the high-
performance group.
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be stated that motivation, self-efficacy and
student engagement are all important aspects of learning and achievement in students.
Conclusion
Scholars have noted that it is important to understand the role of motivation, engagement
and self-efficacy of the students in securing success in education. I agree that parents and school
have a greater role to play in motivation, self-efficacy and engagement of students in higher
education. However, I feel the above discussed literature do not take into account the lifeworld
and unique biographies of children that can impede learning and demoralize students from
pursuing education.

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References
Bakker, A. B., & Bal, M. P. (2010). Weekly work engagement and performance: A study among
starting teachers. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(1), 189-
206.
Busse, V., & Walter, C. (2013). Foreign language learning motivation in higher education: A
longitudinal study of motivational changes and their causes. The Modern Language
Journal, 97(2), 435-456.
Chen, K. C., & Jang, S. J. (2010). Motivation in online learning: Testing a model of self-
determination theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(4), 741-752.
Christenson, S. L., Reschly, A. L., & Wylie, C. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of research on student
engagement. Springer Science & Business Media.
Fan, W., & Williams, C. M. (2010). The effects of parental involvement on students’ academic
self‐efficacy, engagement and intrinsic motivation. Educational psychology, 30(1), 53-
74.
Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing student engagement in higher education. Studies in higher
education, 38(5), 758-773.
Kim, C., Park, S. W., Huynh, N., & Schuermann, R. T. (2017). University students’ motivation,
engagement and performance in a large lecture-format general education course. Journal
of Further and Higher Education, 41(2), 201-214.

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Mills, N., Pajares, F., & Herron, C. (2007). Self‐efficacy of college intermediate French students:
Relation to achievement and motivation. Language learning, 57(3), 417-442.
Shea, P., & Bidjerano, T. (2010). Learning presence: Towards a theory of self-efficacy, self-
regulation, and the development of a communities of inquiry in online and blended
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Siu, O. L., Bakker, A. B., & Jiang, X. (2014). Psychological capital among university students:
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Stewart, M., Stott, T., & Nuttall, A. M. (2016). Study goals and procrastination tendencies at
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van Dinther, M., Dochy, F., & Segers, M. (2011). Factors affecting students’ self-efficacy in
higher education. Educational research review, 6(2), 95-108.
Weiner, B. (2010). The development of an attribution-based theory of motivation: A history of
ideas. Educational psychologist, 45(1), 28-36.