SUITABLY CHOSEN PROBLEMS FOR THE EXPLORATION OF PROSPECTIVE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ SELF- EFFICACY

Self-efficacy in mathematics indicates students’ self-belief in their ability to solve mathematical problems. Such a belief has been shown to be important to motivation because confidence that one will be able to solve a mathematical problem is an antecedent to provide time and effort for figuring out it.

The paper deals with the study applied the quasi-experimental research design involving 60 students of Mathematics Teacher Training for secondary schools at Palacky University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic. This category of students was selected on the assumption that they were matured enough to form an independent opinion about mathematics in relation to their self-efficacy. As an indicator of self-efficacy, students were asked whether they would expect to be able to succeed at one special mathematics task concerning financial mathematics; basic problems concerning this part of real-life mathematics have shown to be suitable means of students’ self-efficacy. In carrying out this study, the researchers used self-constructed mathematics self-efficacy 5-point scale.

Students were randomly divided into three groups of 20 students each. Students in the first group were provided with none pieces of information and hints how to solve a given problem. Students in the second group were provided with the special Solving Problems Guide without any teacher's explanation while students of the third group were provided with both Solving Problems Guide and teacher's explanation. Students were to indicate the degree to which they agreed or disagreed on the above mentioned 5-point scale.

Data from the study were subjected to appropriate statistical analysis to be able to draw up inferences from it. Specifically, the one-way Analysis of Variance followed by Tukey & Dunnett multiple comparisons in Excel using the XLSTAT software was used to test the null hypothesis (no effect of auxiliary materials for students’ self-efficacy with respect to a bit more complicated non-standard problem). The main result of this study was as follows: The null hypothesis could be rejected, i.e. there is a positive effect of teaching activity for students’ self-efficacy.