Sheng Jiang 蒋晟

The first children of families were used to success their families, as a result, they usually have been educated more carefully, and then they are more educated than their younger sisters or brothers. But things are changing. Succession is not exclusive, and children have equal right to be educated. Have they equally opportunities to get higher degrees now? No, younger children are more successful to get higher education; not only because the parents are more experienced after the first children, but also because younger children can benefit from their older brother or sister.

Self-efficacy, one’s self-judgments of personal capabilities to initiate and successfully perform specified tasks at designated levels, expend greater effort, and persevere in the face of adversity (Bandura, 1977; 1986), is a relatively new construct in academic research (Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Schunk, 1991a, 1994). Although self-efficacy is examined with much greater depth in therapeutic contexts, recent studies show that self-efficacy holds significant power for predicting and explaining academic performance in various domains (Lent, Brown & Larkin, 1986; Marsh, Walker, & Debus, 1991; Schunk, 1989a; Schunk, 1994; Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992).