The Impact of Epistemological Beliefs and Achievement Motivation on Learning Outcomes and Academic Self-Efficacy in Education

Abstract

Recent advances in educational technology have prompted significant shifts in instructional practices. Among these, the flipped classroom model has gained attention for promoting student engagement and autonomy. When combined with the 5E instructional framework, it has attracted growing interest from educational researchers. This study investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of a 5E-based flipped classroom through a 10-week intervention involving 113 social science majors enrolled in the “Research Methods in Social Science” course at the University of Passau. Based on survey data, we examined the relationships among students’ epistemological beliefs, achievement motivation, learning performance, and academic self-efficacy in this instructional context. The results indicated that epistemological beliefs significantly predicted both learning performance and academic self-efficacy. Furthermore, the fear-of-failure dimension of achievement motivation was a significant negative predictor of academic self-efficacy.