Abstract:
University students’ self-efficacy or self-confidence for learning and performance is crucial for their academic achievement. However, whilst the discussion on how to improve students’ self-efficacy in education practice has been highly prioritized, less research has been conducted on how to improve people’s self-efficacy in a targeted way, especially from the perspective of individual self-improvement. The question of how self-efficacy affects academic achievement still needs to be qualitatively examined to better understand the factors that influence self-efficacy (Zhang, et al., 2015). Therefore, in this study, the aim is to explore the beliefs of Chinese international doctoral students to develop an understanding of the impact of self-efficacy on their academic achievement and the methods they adopt to improve their academic achievement at the University of Auckland. Focus group and semi-structured interviews were employed as methods to generate data. The researcher transcribed the raw data, then employed thematic analysis and narrative description to analyse the data. Findings revealed that the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement could be positive or negative, influenced by factors such as goal orientation, motivation, self-regulation and attribution style. It was also concluded that five different self-adjusting strategies were reported by participants to improve their self-efficacy: enhancing motivation, self-regulation, adjusting goal setting, positive attribution style, and psychological self-adjustment.
