Citation

Boe O, Bergstøl HO. Int. J. Learn. Teach. Educ. Res. 2017; 16(7): e960.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, IJLTER)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Within the military profession the will to succeed and to strive for results that go beyond what is expected, is the difference between success and failure. The demands of war can be extreme and a crucial factor for the will to succeed is the education of and training on self-efficacy. Self-efficacy can be obtained either through theory or through practice. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether officer cadets at the Norwegian Military Academy felt that there was a correlation between theory and practice when it came to Bandura's four factors of how to increase self-efficacy. The four factors were enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological and mental states.

METHOD: A self-developed questionnaire with 14 questions was used in order to investigate the research question. 10 questions related to theoretical and practical aspects of self-efficacy was developed. The last question was intended to find out which of the four factors that had the largest impact upon self-efficacy, and respondents were forced to choose one of the four factors. 50 officer cadets at the Norwegian Military Academy participated in the study.

RESULTS: A correlation between Bandura's theory and the practice was found. The factors enactive mastery experiences and vicarious experience were found to have a high correlation between theory and practice. The highest correlation between theory and practice was found for the factor verbal persuasion. The lowest correlation between theory and practice was found for the factor physiological and mental states. However, when forced to choose which factor that in total had the largest impact upon self-efficacy, a clear majority of respondents indicated the factor enactive mastery experiences.

Language: en

Keywords

theory; education; practice; military officers; self-efficacy