Students’ Self-Efficacy and Attitudes Toward Web-Based Recipe Learning in Taiwan Culinary Education

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between the self-efficacies and the attitudes toward Web-based Recipe Learning (WRL) of 296 culinary college students in Taiwan. Factors of the WRL Self-Efficacy Scale and the WRL Attitudes Scale were identified in this study using exploratory factor analyses. Both scales showed a good inter-correlation matrix. Correlation and mediational effect analyses were used to examine the relationships between the students’ self-efficacy and attitudes, and several significant findings are reported. First, students’ self-efficacies had positive relations with their attitudes toward WRL. In addition, students’ ‘Ingredient Recognition’ self-efficacy was found to significantly predict the other two dimensions of self-efficacy: ‘Knife Skills’ and ‘Cooking Procedure.’ Moreover, students’ ‘Ingredient Recognition’ self-efficacy was found to significantly predict their WRL attitudes of ‘Usefulness’ via a mediated variable, ‘Cooking Procedure’ self-efficacy. To sum up, the results suggest that ‘Ingredient Recognition’ is a fundamental level of WRL self-efficacy, while both ‘Knife Skills’ and ‘Cooking Procedure’ are advanced levels of WRL self-efficacies. And, when considering the mediational effect, culinary college students’ self-efficacy for cooking procedure is an important mediator between the fundamental self-efficacy and attitudes in web-based culinary learning.