MEASURING PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY IN APPLYING MATHEMATICS

In England a new course of post-compulsory study has been developed based on the premise that developing confidence and ability in applying and modelling with mathematics will better prepare students to elect to study courses that require relatively high levels of mathematics in their future studies in Further and Higher Education. In investigating this we have designed an instrument to measure perceived self-efficacy beliefs in applying mathematics. Here we report principles of construction of the instrument together with initial analysis which suggests that it does allow measure of perceived self-efficacy beliefs in mathematics generally and in pure and applied mathematics separately with early evidence suggesting that the new course is successfully developing students’ confidence in applying mathematics.