Universal Beliefs and Specific Practices: Students’ Math Self-Efficacy and Related Factors in the United States and China

Abstract

This study intends to compare and contrast student and school factors that are associated with students' mathematics self-efficacy in the United States and China. Using hierarchical linear regressions to analyze the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 data, this study compares math self-efficacy, achievement, and variables such as math teacher support and socioeconomic status (SES) between 15-year-old students in the U.S. and in Shanghai, China. The findings suggest that on average, students from Shanghai showed higher math self-efficacy and better achievement than those of American students. However, at the student level, similar positive relationships between math teacher support and math self-efficacy and between SES and math self-efficacy were found in both locations. That is, in the U.S. and Shanghai, an increase in math teacher support predicts an increase in math self-efficacy, also higher SES is significantly associated with higher math self-efficacy. In addition, at the school level, the smaller difference in American students' math self-efficacy between higher SES school and lower SES school indicates that the U.S. is more equitable between schools than Shanghai, China in terms of students' math self-efficacy. Implications from this study indicate that improving teacher support in math class and narrowing the gap in students' self-efficacy related to school-level SES is a significant issue for the U.S. and Shanghai, China respectively.

Systematic Literature Review on Secondary School Students’ Mathematics Self-Efficacy

“…All findings of the studies showed that the lower the secondary school students' mathematics self-efficacy, the lower the marks (performance) of mathematics results they scored. Usually, the studies showed that students' mathematics self-efficacy with some other factors such as mathematics anxiety (Aksu, Ozkaya, Gedik & Konyalıoglu, 2016;O'Keeffe, White, Panizzon, Elliott, & Semmens, 2018;Reyes, 2019a;Reyes, 2019b;Recber, Isikal & Koc, 2018;Yuksel & Geban, 2016), teacher support (Wu, 2016;Yildirim & Yildirim, 2019), online learning (Ichinose & Bonsangue, 2016;Parsons & Gonzalez, 2018), program (Cleary, Velardi & Schnaidman, 2017;Snipes, Huang, Jaquet & Finkelstein, 2016), learning materials (Cai, Liu, Yang & Liang, 2019;Peranginangin, Saragih & Siagian, 2019;Ulandari, Amry & Saragih 2019), instructional games (Reyes, 2019b), and discovery learning (Simamora, Saragih & Siregar, 2019) influenced the secondary school students' performance in mathematics. Hence, the students that have high performance in mathematics were the students' that have high mathematics selfefficacy and vice versa.…”

“…There are only 2 out of 26 studies that investigated the influence of teacher support as the factor affecting the secondary school students' mathematics self-efficacy. The two studies were conducted by Wu (2016) and Yildrim & Yildrim (2019). There is a positive correlation between the teacher support and secondary school students' mathematics self-efficacy.…”

Perceptions of the Effect of an EAP Course on English Self-efficacy and English Proficiency: Voices of International Students in China

“…Efficacious individuals outperform their counterparts who are not (Cave, Evans, Dewey, & Hartshorn, 2018). Students with high self-efficacy are likely to overcome difficult tasks than those with low self-efficacy (Martin & Rimm-Kaufman, 2015;Wu, 2016). While efficacious students make an effort to achieve their set goals, those who are not dwell on their shortcomings at school and makes little effort to achieve their set goals (Bandura, 1978;Corkett, Hatt, & Benevides, 2011;Wang, Harrison, Cardullo, & Lin, 2018).…”

“…One significant predictor of high academic achievement at the university level is self-efficacy (Bartimote-Aufflicka, Bridgeman, Walker, Sharma, & Smith, 2016;Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). Self-efficacy is directly related to the success of students (Chao, McInerney, & Bai, 2019;Corkett, Hatt, & Benevides, 2011;Wu, 2016). English self-efficacy is "an individual's belief or confidence in his/her ability to use English language to communicate with others, understand English conversations, read materials, and write in English" (Wang, Harrison, Cardullo, & Lin, 2018, p. 235).…”

Sorotan Literatur Bersistematik bagi Efikasi Kendiri Pelajar Terhadap Matematik

“…Kemahiran berfikir, sikap, jantina, kepercayaan diri dan keyakinan diri merupakan pemboleh ubah yang boleh dikaitkan dengan faktor dalaman, manakala status sosio-ekonomi dan kaedah pembelajaran menunjukkan faktor persekitaran yang dikaji bersama dengan efikasi kendiri pelajar. Terdapat juga faktor guru ditemui dalam analisis ini seperti sokongan guru (King-Sears & Strogilos, 2020;Usta, 2016;Wu, 2016), efikasi kendiri guru (Chang, 2015;Sarac, 2017) dan kebolehan guru mengajar matematik (Kaskens et al, 2020;King-Sears & Strogilos, 2020;Regier & Savic, 2020).…”