Self-efficacy, the belief people hold in their personal capabilities to accomplish specific tasks, is a central component of motivation and persistence in learning situations. Bandura (1997) theorized that self-efficacy develops as individuals interpret information from four primary sources: direct experiences of mastery and failure, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological and affective states. Although these sources have been widely studied, researchers have typically examined them in narrowly defined ways, with limited attention to the broader sociocultural forces at play. Embracing a social cognitive perspective, this paper considers how social and cultural factors affect the way learners perceive, process, and respond to information and thus form beliefs about their capabilities. This perspective emphasizes how signals in the proximal environment (e.g., social models, social messages, and institutional policies), along with learners’ interpretations of their experiences, are shaped by wider sociocultural norms (e.g., epistemological, sociopolitical, communicative) through which people learn what competence and success mean. By illuminating the sociocultural underpinnings of self-efficacy, the paper underscores the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of self-efficacy development that accounts for cultural variability, thereby advancing both theoretical understanding and practical applications in diverse educational settings.
