How YouTube Tutorials and Evening Art Classes Build Confidence in Adult Learners

For millions of adults who return to the classroom after a full day of work, learning to draw, paint, or sculpt is more than a hobby. It is an act of persistence, squeezed into evening hours when energy is low and self-doubt can be high. A new study from Macau now offers one of the most detailed pictures yet of how these adult learners actually succeed, and the answer involves a surprisingly modern pairing: the videos, images, and tutorials they consume online before class, and the confidence they build once they arrive in the studio. The research, published in the journal Current Psychology by Oscar Wu of the University of Edinburgh, traces a chain of psychological effects that runs from digital preparation to classroom engagement to artistic self-belief and, ultimately, to the learning outcomes that adult students report.

The study focused on adult evening school learners in Macau, a population that has been largely invisible in educational research, which tends to privilege full-time students in universities or younger children in formal schooling. Evening school art learners face a distinctive set of pressures. They juggle jobs, family responsibilities, and fatigue, and they often begin their artistic training with limited prior experience. Understanding what helps them engage in class and believe in their own abilities is therefore not just an academic question. It speaks to a growing global trend of adults seeking creative education outside traditional daytime institutions, often supported by the vast ecosystem of online art resources that has exploded over the past decade.

Methodologically, the research stands out for its two-stage design. Wu adopted an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach, which means the qualitative work came first and shaped the quantitative phase that followed. In the first stage, twenty adult learners took part in semi-structured interviews, and the transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis, the widely used qualitative technique developed by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. The interviews revealed four central themes. Online resources, it turned out, primarily served to reduce uncertainty at the moment of task initiation, helping learners feel prepared before they attempted something new in class. Classroom engagement was shaped by personal interest, the quality of guidance received, the overall classroom climate, and the demands of adult life pressing in from outside. Art self-efficacy, the belief in one’s own capacity to produce art, developed through the experience of completing works, through problem solving when things went wrong, and through specific, targeted feedback from instructors. Finally, the perceived outcomes of learning extended well beyond technical skill, encompassing persistence and even emotional regulation.

These qualitative insights then informed the second stage, a large-scale survey of 276 adult learners. The questionnaires measured four constructs: use of online art learning resources, classroom engagement, art self-efficacy, and perceived visual art learning outcomes. Wu subjected the data to factor analysis to confirm that the survey items reliably captured each construct, and then to structural equation modeling, a statistical framework that allows researchers to test networks of relationships among multiple variables simultaneously. The measurement model was rigorous, built from 41 indicators across the four constructs, with all standardized loadings statistically significant and ranging from a low of 0.517 to a high of 0.806, indicating that the survey items were strongly tied to the underlying psychological dimensions they were designed to measure.

The structural model told a coherent story. Online resource use was positively associated with classroom engagement, meaning that learners who drew on digital materials outside class tended to participate more fully once they were in the room. Classroom engagement, in turn, was positively associated with art self-efficacy, and art self-efficacy was positively associated with perceived visual art learning outcomes. In other words, the digital and the physical were not competing modes of learning but sequential stages of a single process. Watching a tutorial or studying reference images at home did not replace the classroom; it primed learners to engage with it, and that engagement built the confidence that carried through to artistic achievement.

To probe this chain more deeply, Wu conducted a supplementary serial mediation analysis using standardized composite scores. The technique, based on 10,000 bias-corrected bootstrap samples, tested whether the connection between online resource use and learning outcomes flowed specifically through the two intermediate psychological states: engagement and self-efficacy. The results supported this indirect pathway, with an indirect association of 0.221 and a 95 percent bias-corrected confidence interval ranging from 0.162 to 0.297. Because that interval does not include zero, the finding suggests a reliable indirect association, one in which the effect of digital preparation on perceived outcomes is carried by the combined action of classroom engagement and growing artistic confidence.

The theoretical backbone of the study is Albert Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy, the well-established psychological principle that people’s beliefs in their own capabilities shape how much effort they invest, how they respond to setbacks, and ultimately what they achieve. The interviews provided a vivid, ground-level account of how self-efficacy forms in an art studio. Learners described how finishing a drawing or a painting, however imperfect, generated a sense of accomplishment that made the next attempt feel possible. They described solving problems on their own, such as fixing a proportion or recovering from a smeared wash, as moments of growing competence. And they described the outsized role of specific feedback, in which an instructor pointed to a concrete strength or a concrete fix rather than offering vague praise. These are precisely the sources of efficacy information that Bandura’s theory predicts, observed here in the particular context of adult creative education.

The study is careful about the limits of its evidence. Because the data are cross-sectional and self-reported, collected at a single point in time through questionnaires and interviews, the pathways cannot be interpreted as causal effects. It is possible, for example, that more confident learners are simply more inclined to seek out online resources, rather than the resources building confidence. The author explicitly frames the results as theoretically informed associations, and this honesty matters in a field where online learning research is often oversold. Still, the alignment between the qualitative themes and the quantitative paths gives the findings unusual credibility. The interviews suggested a mechanism, the survey data were consistent with it, and the joint display linking themes, constructs, and inferences shows the integration that mixed-methods researchers strive for.

For educators and institutions, the practical implications are striking. Adult art programs may gain more by treating online resources as a formal part of the learning architecture rather than as an informal supplement. Instructors could curate tutorial videos and reference collections that reduce uncertainty before each new technique is introduced, knowing that this preparation appears to feed directly into classroom engagement. Feedback practices could be sharpened to emphasize specific, actionable observations, since that is what learners themselves identified as the fuel of self-efficacy. And classroom climates that welcome interest and accommodate the realities of adult life, from childcare schedules to work fatigue, may do more for engagement than any single technological tool. As creative education continues to migrate toward hybrid formats, this study of Macau’s evening school learners suggests that the screen and the studio are not rivals. They are links in a chain, and the strength of that chain may determine whether adult learners not only finish their coursework but also come to see themselves as artists.

Subject of Research: Self-efficacy and classroom engagement in online-supported adult visual art education

Article Title: Self-efficacy and classroom engagement in relation to online art learning resources and visual art learning outcomes among adult evening school learners: an exploratory sequential mixed-methods study

Article References: Wu, O. (2026). Self-efficacy and classroom engagement in relation to online art learning resources and visual art learning outcomes among adult evening school learners: an exploratory sequential mixed-methods study. Current Psychology, 45(20), Article 1599. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10133-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10133-5

Keywords: art self-efficacy, adult learners, online learning resources, classroom engagement, visual art education, mixed methods, structural equation modeling, Macau, evening school, thematic analysis, serial mediation, Current Psychology