In a theoretical study Fletcher 22 provided a first glimpse attempting to explain how cooperative
education experience might enhance self-efficacy and help students make the transition from
student to practitioner. Specifically, she suggested that cooperative education increases selfefficacy
through performance accomplishments, one source of efficacy information. In this
instance, performance accomplishments would be co-op experiences themselves in which
students need to use skills, abilities, and coping strategies to perform tasks. Successful
experiences can result in a feedback loop where performance accomplishments would lead to
increased self-efficacy, which in turn, enhances students’ performance, further strengthening
their self-efficacy beliefs. The possibility that cooperative education can be a source of efficacy
information through performance accomplishments is provocative, given that performance
accomplishments are generally viewed as the most potent source of self-efficacy information;
that is, of the four sources of efficacy information, performance accomplishments are thought to
exert the most influence.23 24 Nevertheless, formal workplace experiences also expose students to
successful peer models, mentor figures, and verbal encouragement that can provide self-efficacy
information through Bandura’s vicarious experiences and verbal persuasion sources.
Although the co-op field itself has not fully identified what happens during the co-op experience
to produce beneficial outcomes - leading some researchers to refer to this as the “black box” of
co-op25 - there have been a number of outcome studies demonstrating its salutary effects on
students’ subsequent employment and career. For example, Weinstein26 found that co-op
students evinced greater certainty about career choice compared to students who did not
participate in a co-op experience. Co-op students were also more likely to have first jobs related
to their major and overall career plans27 and were more likely to hold positions with higher levels
of responsibility.28 29 They were also shown to more successfully adjust at the outset of their
employment,30 were more self-reliant in learning about their organization and work groups, and
rated their knowledge of task and role more highly than non-co-ops.31 Finally, as related to the
social cognitive stream of research, co-op experience has been found to increase self-confidence,
self-concept, and career identity.32 33
It goes without saying that cooperative education and other related formal work experience
programs during the undergraduate experience provide students with opportunities to try out,
learn from, and reflect on ongoing work experience.34 As a result, they help students transition
into full-time work more easily, helping them overcome the “reality shock” attributed to first job
experiences for uninitiated novices.35 36 In addition, through its enhancement of self-efficacy,
cooperative education can also prove beneficial to students in sustaining their ongoing academic
performance and their persistence to graduation.37 38 39 40 41 Blair, Millea, and Hammer42 in a
study of undergraduate engineering majors concurred that those who completed three semesters
of co-op had superior academic performance and they also earned higher starting salaries
(though it took them longer to complete their undergraduate program). Of the various
dimensions of self-efficacy that are likely to be affected by co-op, it could be work self-efficacy
that would be the construct of choice. Work self-efficacy measures a range of behaviors and