Mathematical literacy and self-efficacy of first year third level students

A PISA style test was administered to first year students in three institutions across the third-level sector in Ireland. Immediately following this test a questionnaire was completed seeking to identify factors such as confidence, perseverance and goal-orientation that may influence a student’s mathematical achievement. In this paper we will discuss some of the results from the test and a section of the questionnaire that referred to the students’ confidence in performing those types of mathematical tasks.

Introduction

Much has been written about self-efficacy, which Bandura first described as “judgements of how well one can execute courses of actions required to deal with prospective situations” [1]. Previous studies have shown that self-efficacy is related to engagement in learning [9], and that there is a correlation between self-efficacy and performance on task (for example [10]). Confidence in one’s ability to learn mathematics has been found to have a strong positive correlation with mathematical achievement, notably by Fennema and Sherman [4, 5].

Carmichael and Taylor [3] measured three levels of confidence: confidence to succeed in the course, in a mathematics topic and in a specific problem, and found that females and mature students reported lower levels of confidence on all three scales. They found that the specific measure of students’ confidence (similar to Bandura’s self-efficacy) was the most useful in predicting performance. However, Norwich [6] found general confidence in mathematical ability made significant contribution to performance, but once this effect is accounted for, no extra contribution was made by self-efficacy and concluded there was no simple relationship between task performance and self-efficacy.

In an effort to measure the correlation between self-efficacy and performance the authors designed an experiment where students attempted to solve a problem using a specific mathematical task and then were asked to rate their self-efficacy in that specific type of mathematical task. The results of this experiment are reported here…