Self-efficacy beliefs and academic help seeking behavior of Chinese students

Abstract

Helping students to acquire self-regulated learning abilities has become a major goal of our education. This study focuses on a major aspect of self-regulated learning: adaptive help-seeking. Adaptive help seeking behaviors allow students to learn effectively when facing academic difficulty and facilitate adoption of other self-regulated learning strategies. This study explores how Chinese students' perceive academic self-efficacy and social efficacy related to their academic help-seeking behaviors. The hypotheses were supported in an examination of 271 students from three Hong Kong tertiary institutions. When students had high level of social efficacy, they tended to displayed more adaptive and less of non-adaptive help-seeking behaviors. These findings add to the literature on Chinese students' academic help seeking behavior and also have practical implications for teachers seeking to promote self-regulated learning behaviors.