The role of math teacher self-efficacy beliefs in 9th grade mathematics education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Teachers' experiences, teaching approaches, and consequences on learning

Proposal

Research background: There are numerous factors that might influence a student’s math achievement. Traditional studies in students’ academic achievement mainly focus on students’ personal traits, family background and socioeconomic status of students’ family and school (Caprara et al., 2006). However, it is essential for educators not only to address why students’ mathematical achievement levels differ one from another but only to find feasible and well-proven approaches to advance mathematics education.
Individuals with a higher level of self-efficacy could perceive difficult work as challenges instead of danger or threats, and hence they tend to set goals that are more challenging, make stronger commitment to pursue their goals, have more resilience when confronting setbacks, recover more quickly after experiencing failures, and interpret failure as the consequence of their lack of effort, skill or knowledge that they can make up if they work harder (Pajares & Schunk, 2001). Self-efficacy is different from self-beliefs in that an individual’s belief in their efficacy could be a response to direct or indirect changes in various contexts (Zimmerman, 2000).
Teachers’ beliefs of their efficacy play a role a student's achievement through different pathways. It was studied that collective teacher efficacy has a positive relationship with students’ reading and mathematics achievement (Ross, 1992). Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy tends to be stronger in schools where students are disciplined and have higher academic achievements (Raudenbush et al., 1992). Additionally, there is a positive association between teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs with student's motivation (Ashton & Webb, 1986). Teachers’ sense of efficacy also promotes students’ self-direction (Rose & Medway, 1981), and students’ positive attitudes about school (Miskel et al., 1983). Moreover, teacher’s efficacy beliefs enhance students’ self-efficacy and promote students’ engagement and efforts in school tasks (Ross et al., 2001).

Goal: The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of math teachers’ self-efficacy on students’ mathematics achievement, mathematics identity, mathematics utility, mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics interest in 9th grade of high school, controlling 11 confounding variables, including school type, school urbanicity, school geographic region, student’s family socio-economic status, student’s father education, student’s mother education, student’s sex, race, prior math achievement and math teacher's race and math teaching certification.

Data and data analysis: This study draws data from the base-year data of High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 from the National Center of Education Statistics. Propensity score matching was conducted to obtain comparable groups for data analysis, so as to determine the effects between levels of math teachers’ self-efficacy and 9th-grade students’ mathematics achievement, identity, utility, self-efficacy, and interest.

Findings: The findings from this study suggest the profound effect of math teachers’ self-efficacy on several aspects of students’ math education, including students’ mathematics achievement, mathematics identity, mathematics self-efficacy, and mathematics interest. However, no statistically significant differences in students’ mathematics utility were detected between students who learned from a math teacher with a higher self-efficacy level and those who had a math teacher with a lower self-efficacy level.

Author

• Wan Ren, University of Pennsylvania