Learner autonomy, self-regulation skills and self-efficacy beliefs – How can students’ academic writing skills be supported?

High self-efficacy beliefs and effective self-regulatory strategies are increasingly important in academic settings, and especially in developing academic writing skills. This article deals with how students develop academic writing skills in two different pedagogical settings (as autonomous learners and in a traditional learning environment), and how this is associated with the students’ self-regulatory strategies and self-efficacy beliefs. In the study, self-regulatory skills referred to the ability to take charge of, manage and organize the learning process, while self-efficacy beliefs were defined as the strength of students’ confidence to accomplish an extensive task and sense of succeeding. The method was quantitative, including some qualitative elements, and data was elicited through a survey answered by 150 students, after they had attended courses in academic writing. The survey consisted of 1 open-ended question and 16 multiple-choice questions (a five-point Likert scale). The data was analyzed using SPSS. The results show that self-regulatory skills and self-efficacy beliefs have a greater impact on learning academic writing skills in traditional learning settings than in learning settings where the students are supposed to work more independently, and where teacher support is not available to the same extent.