PROGRAMME:

ED706 MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

MAE 712: RESEARCH INVESTIGATION IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

TITLE:
CRITICAL ARTICLE REVIEW
THE EFFECT OF MATHEMATICS SELF EFFICACY ON MATHEMATICS

ACHIEVEMENT OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

NAME:
MOHD HAIKAL BIN MOHD ZAIN

ID:
2016330745

LECTURER:
PROF. DR . PARMJIT SINGH A/L APERAPAR SINGH

FACULTY:
FACULTY OF EDUCATION, UITM SHAH ALAM
PERSIARAN RAJA MUDA, SECTION 7, 40000 SHAH ALAM,
SELANGOR DARUL EHSAN
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The Effect of Mathematics Self Efficacy on Mathematics Achievement

of High School Students

Liu, X., & Koirala, H. (2009). The Effect of Mathematics Self-Efficacy on Mathematics
Achievement of High School Students. NERA Conference Proceedings 2009, 1022.
Retrieved from
http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=nera_2009

Article Summary

Introduction

The title of this article is The Effect of Mathematics Self Efficacy on Mathematics

Achievement of High School Students written by Xiu Liu and Hari Koirala. Both are from

Eastern Connecticut State University. The ambition of the study was to understand more about

relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement of 10th grade

students. Other than that the researcher want to investigate whether mathematics achieveme nt

that can be considerably predicted by mathematics self-efficacy. The author state two research

questions, first: was there a significant relationship between mathematics self- efficacy and

mathematics achievement?, and secondly: could mathematics achievement of high school

sophomores be considerably predicted by their mathematics self-efficacy?. In my opinion, this

is a very interesting research because basically teachers want their students to get higher mark

in exam but teachers have no knowledge whether their students beliefs that they can solve the

questions or not . Researchers around the world, including Bandura, have proved that self-

efficacy affects persistence, human motivation, action, efforts, action, achievement, and

behaviour achievement (Bandura, 1977, 2000; Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992).

Many students believe that mathematics is important but they may not believe that they can

solve the math problem, so the author want to know the correlation between mathematics self-

efficacy and mathematics achievement which is positive or negative .

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Analysis

The author choose to use non experimental design of this research and this is a

quantitative research with survey study. Survey question being choose by the author for

instrumentation purpose of this study. In the part of beliefs and opinion about self-efficac y,

five items related to mathematics self-efficacy were use from the instrument. The item used in

this study is high in reliability due to high internal consistency with alpha value of = .933. If

alpha value is more or equal to .90 can be considered as outstanding in term of reliability

(Bonett & Wright 2015). That instrument was used by the ELS: 2002 study to mainly measure

high school sophomore students perceptions of school experiences and activities, attain their

values and goals for the future, evaluate their English speaking ability, collect informa tio n

about parents education and family support, and task value and self-efficacy of mathematics

and reading. For the mathematics self-efficacy subscale, participants were asked to select one

response on a four-point Likert scale ranging from 1= almost never to 4= almost always. To

measure mathematics achievement, Math IRT (item-response theory) was used. This score was

an estimate of the number of items students answered correctly when they responded to a ll

items in the ELS: 2002 mathematics test. Thats mean mathematics self-efficacy will be the

independent variable and dependant variable will be mathematics achievement. Basically,

Likerts scale have been use never meet the highest score to avoid mislead ing of understand ing

of scale in instrument. Therefore 4 scale in this instrument can be accepted as normal in survey

and answerable.

This study is conducted in United States involved 748 schools and the sample size of

the study was 11726 second year students in high school. The researcher use two stage

sampling design which is stratified sampling and random sampling to determine the sample in

High School in United State. The population of research around 15000 second year students in

high school involving 752 private and public high school. Thats total sample is around 78.17 %
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from all population of the research. Using more than 50% sample from all population indicated

that the sample was valid. This is supported by Krejcie & Morgan (1970), they designed a table

using sample size formula for finite population to shorten the process of shaping the sample

size for a finite population. In the table show that if total population is around 15000, the sample

must be at least 375 to be valid for the research and the author was used 11726 of sample on

the research. In my opinion this a great example for researchers to use as many as sample from

the population to get higher level of reliability and its obey the rule of sampling.

To analysis data, the researcher examine the data using SPSS 15.0. This analysis is to

predict the relationship between students mathematical achievements in IRT score to students

mathematical self-efficacy using Pearson Correlation. The result of Pearson Correlation

depicted that students mathematics self-efficacy are significantly related to score in

mathematics IRT. This result should indicates every relationship in every subscale of item

among this two survey questionnaire. This process is to ensure high reliability of every item in

every subscale that have been use in order to investigate research findings.

On the other hand researcher using linear regression analysis to find the impact of

students mathematical achievement to students mathematical self-efficacy. The result of

influence in mathematics self-efficacy through linear regression analysis shows that strongly

significant to mathematics achievement. In the linear regression analysis between mathematics

self-efficacy to mathematics achievement in too complicated because involving strata and PSU.

This is suggest that involvement of more domain or determinant should be reduced in order to

avoid confusion. Many researchers practise Pearson Correlation to find the relations hip

between two variable while they practice linear regression to determine the impact of two

variable.
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Conclusion

The correlation analysis shows that mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics

achievement were positively related. The result of survey linear regression analysis indicated

that mathematics achievement could be significantly predicted by self-efficacy. The finding is

parallel with previous study which is students who are confidence with their performance in

mathematics tended to have better mathematics achievement (Ayotola & Adedeji 2009). In my

personal view I am strongly agree the findings of this study was not narrowed to the sample of

the study and the discoveries can be generalised to other population outside this study to widen

the effect of mathematical self-efficacy to mathematics achievement.

In this study I learn roughly about what is mathematics self-efficacy and the role in

mathematics achievement. I learn some researcher were able to collect their data by using large

scale of samping. Zimmerman and Kirsantas mentioned that given a significant of homework

and guide them consistency with a good care suggest that can increase self-efficacy of the

students specially in mathematics (Zimmerman& Kitsantas,2005).In my view, this research

finding is a beginning for teacher to develop better understanding to their students and maybe

can start promoting mathematics self-efficacy from primary school.

Reference

Ayotola, A., & Adedeji, T. (2009). The relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and
achievement in mathematics. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(1), 953957.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.169

Bonett, D. G., & Wright, T. A. (2015). Cronbachs alpha reliability: Interval estimatio n,
hypothesis testing, and sample size planning. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(1),
315. http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1960

Morgan, K. &. (2012). Sample Size Determination Using Krejcie and Morgan Table.

Zimmerman, B. J., & Kitsantas, A. (2005). Homework practices and academic achieveme nt:
The mediating role of self-efficacy and perceived responsibility beliefs. Contemporary
Educational Psychology, 30(4), 397-417.