RESEARCH ARTICLE Students' self-efficacy for science in different school systems Bat-Shahar Dorfman | David Fortus Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel Correspondence Bat-Shahar Dorfman, Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. Email: bat-shahar.dorfman@weizmann.ac.il Abstract The important role of self-efficacy (SE) in students' moti- vation, engagement, persistence, and academic achieve- ments has been reconfirmed by ample research, both in general and for STEM disciplines. As most studies focused on traditional school systems, additional research is needed on how science SE develops in different educa- tional environments, which was the goal of this study. Data were collected from 1979 students in Grades 5–9 from 19 traditional, Waldorf, and democratic schools in Israel. Students completed a questionnaire that assessed their science self-efficacy (SSE), general and academic self- efficacy (GASE), and the sources of their SSE: teachers', parents', and peers' social persuasions, vicarious experiences and mastery experiences. Results revealed that SSE and GASE differed in their levels and in the way they changed with grade. These differences, and variations in the roles of the various sources of SSE, appeared to be influenced by the schools' cultures and curricula. Quantitative results are accompanied by verbal illustrative examples from inter- views with students and teachers. KEYWORDS democratic education, educational environment, school system, science education, self-efficacy, Waldorf education 1 | INTRODUCTION In many countries, the number of students pursuing science-related university degrees remains rela- tively low, and the pipeline starts to leak at high school, with a relatively low proportion of students choosing to major in science studies (Maltese & Tai, 2011; National Science Board, 2018; OECD, Received: 23 June 2018 Revised: 14 January 2019 Accepted: 30 January 2019 DOI: 10.1002/tea.21542 J Res Sci Teach. 2019;1–23. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tea © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1