Modelling self-efficacy, self-regulation, self-directed learning and career processes of adult professionals and relations with learning outcomes and labour market success

Abstract

This study investigated generic competences predicting students’ learning outcomes and labour market performance. The literature revealed four predictive self-reported concepts: self-efficacy, selfregulating learning capabilities, self-directing learning capabilities, and self-directing career capabilities. However, there was a lack of conceptually clarity, in combination with a lack of empirical evidence on how the concepts were related. Hence we departed from the four respective theoretical frameworks to safeguard the content validity, constructed theory-based items and scientific measures, using the Rasch model, and modelled the constructs in a structural equation model. Our models revealed a dynamic intra-individual causal system in which self-efficacy and self-regulating learning capabilities are predictors of self-directing learning capabilities that operate as a mediator towards grade point average. Self-efficacy acts as a significant direct predictor of achieved European Credit Transfer System credits (ECTS). Self-directing career capabilities showed to be two-dimensional.