Abstract:

The learning process is not only strived on the students’ cognitive factors, but also other factors such as the students’ affective domain or self-efficacy beliefs must be considered in order to reach a significant learning. Regarding of students’ self-efficacy beliefs, different studies have already reported to be an important mediator of students’ learning behaviors and the amount of effort they attribute to learning. Self-efficacious students will be more likely to perform more challenging activities and preserver in difficult situations. Thus, this research aims to assess the influence of undertaking a flipped-classroom strategy in the students’ self-efficacy toward learning science. The study was conducted in a General Science course at the Teaching Training School of the University of Extremadura. Self-efficacy students’ beliefs were collected before starting the course (pre-test) and after the course was completed (post-test) using a previously validated questionnaire. The results obtained in this research suggest that the flipped classroom teaching methodology is an appropriate strategy to improve the students’ self-efficacy beliefs towards science not only in scientific skills but also providing more confidence in their ability to use science.

Keywords:

Flipped learning, scaffolding, science education.