Academic self-efficacy predicts academic achievement

• Research over many decades has sought to understand elements of learning behaviour that predict academic performance, particularly academic outcome and achievement.
  
  
• A good deal of this research explores motivation as a key construct that affects learning behaviour although much like dyslexia, this field of educational research is fraught with discrepancies and controversies which lead to a dearth of comprehensive models that capture the dynamics of learning behaviours (Bong, 1991).
  
  
• A very interesting more recent paper (de Feyter et al, 2012) looked more closely at the moderating effects of self-efficacy on academic motivation through the lens of the 'Big Five' personality traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
  
  
• Findings suggested that in particular, self-efficacy had a moderating influence on the impact of neuroticism on academic performance, and that conscientiousness positively affected academic performance but in an indirect way through the construct of academic motivation.
  
  
• Another recent study also looked at the role of the Big Five in predicting academic motivation and achievement (Komarraju et al, 2011) which aside from other interesting and important results also confirmed the impact of conscientiousness on academic motivation to accomplish high academic standards.
  
  
• These two research papers add to the emerging body of evidence that spotlights how important individual differences in student learning behaviour can significantly impact on academic output.
  
  
• But the two most significant studies to date are both meta-analyses of the wide range of literature that relates academic self-efficacy to academic achievement. Richardson et al (2012) found that the studies in their analysis collectively accounted for a significant percentage of the variance in Grade Point Averages in the academic performance of American university students.
  
  
• The most recent investigation of 59 relevant studies by Honicke et al (2016) concluded that these presented overwhelming evidence to support the relationship of academic self-efficacy to academic achievement although their paper also highlighted the diversity of research methodologies and frameworks which brought to light quite a wide variety of additional mediating and moderating variables that impact on the relationship.