ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
This article is part of the Research TopicEducational Leadership and Sustainable DevelopmentView all 21 articles
The Effect of Academic Self-Efficacy on Academic Achievement among University Students: A Moderated Mediation Model of Achievement Goal Orientation and Teacher's Transformational Leadership
Provisionally accepted
- 1Heng Shui University, Heng Shui, China
- 2Shan Xi Vocational Academy of Arts, Xi An, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
With the growing employment pressure faced by university students and the increasing demand for their comprehensive abilities, exploring the factors that influence academic achievement to promote their academic progress holds significant practical importance. Drawing from a sample of university students and grounded in the framework of Social Cognitive Theory, this study investigates the mechanism through which academic self-efficacy affects academic achievement. It specifically tests the mediating effect of achievement goal orientation and the moderating effect of teacher's transformational leadership within this process. The results indicate that: academic self-efficacy has a significant positive impact on the academic achievement of university students; achievement goal orientation plays a positive mediating role in the relationship between academic self-efficacy and academic achievement; and students' perceived teacher's transformational leadership positively moderates the relationship between academic self-efficacy and achievement goal orientation. Specifically, the positive effect of academic self-efficacy on achievement goal orientation is stronger when students perceive a higher level of transformational leadership from their teachers. This research confirms that academic self-efficacy drives academic achievement through a goal-setting pathway. The findings suggest that higher education institutions can promote student academic development by enhancing the transformational leadership capabilities of teachers, which in turn boosts students' efficacy.
Keywords: social cognitive theory, Academic self-efficacy, Academic Achievement, achievement goal orientation, Transformational leadership
Received: 27 Jul 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, liu and gao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chang Liu, 364306905@qq.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.