Abstract:

According to Bandura's self-efficacy theory, students who believe in their own capacities for future success are likely to accomplish the desired achievement. This research aimed to examine the correlation between students' self-efficacy and their academic success in mathematics teaching. 150 high school students from the City of Zagreb in the Republic of Croatia participated in the research. Student self-efficacy was assessed with the Sources of Math Self-Efficacy scale questionnaire intended for high school students. The results of the research were in accordance with the set hypothesis and confirmed that the assessment of student self-efficacy positively correlates with grades achieved in mathematics using Spearman's correlation coefficient. Using the Mann-Whitney U test for two independent samples, it was tested whether students who had a worse final grade in mathematics at the end of the previous school year differed from students who had a better final grade in mathematics at the end of the previous school year in self-efficacy, which confirmed statistically significant difference. The research showed that students who have a better grade in mathematics estimate their own self-efficacy as higher.

Keywords:

Academic success, mathematics, high school, self-efficacy.