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The Role of Self-Efficacy in Reading Achievement of Young Children in Urban Schools

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Abstract

Academic self-efficacy has been found to be important in predicting educational success among older children and adolescents, but scant work has addressed this for very young children. This study explored (a) whether academic self-efficacy appears to be associated with reading achievement among children in urban elementary schools in primary grades, (b) whether one can differentiate between concepts of self-efficacy and self-concept within this age group, and, if so, which has more predictive power for reading achievement, and (c) whether student motivation and classroom behavior mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and reading. Findings from random-effect multi-level modeling show that children in primary grades can differentiate between self-efficacy and self-concept, and it was task-specific self-efficacy tha1t significantly influenced reading achievement. Of the two possible mediators, student motivation significantly mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and reading achievement. Implications for the role of school social workers in enhancing achievement among young, vulnerable children are discussed.

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Notes

  1. As discussed in the method section, our study sample includes students referred by teachers as at-risk readers, and their standardized reading scores are low.

  2. Since we included both self-efficacy and self-concept measure in the model, we checked if there is a collinearity problem between the two measures. The magnitude of correlation between the two measures was moderate (r = .25, p < .001), and we did not find any further evidence for collinearity.

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Acknowledgments

Data collection was funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. The authors would like to acknowledge the staff members at Mathematica Policy Research for data collection services and the New York, Boston, and Port Arthur Experience Corps® staff members for their cooperation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Welfare, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 406-772, Korea

    Yung Soo Lee

  2. George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1196, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Melissa Jonson-Reid

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Lee, Y.S., Jonson-Reid, M. The Role of Self-Efficacy in Reading Achievement of Young Children in Urban Schools. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 33, 79–89 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-015-0404-6

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