MATHEMATICS EFFICACY AMONG STUDENTS WITH DYSCALCULIA IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS IN KANDARA SUB-COUNTY, MURANGA COUNTY, KENYA

<p>The thrust of the study was to determine levels of mathematic efficacy among students with dyscalculia in public secondary in Kandara sub-county in Muranga County guided by Expectancy Theory (ET) of motivation developed in 1964 by Victor Vroom. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The population for study was 54 Public secondary schools in Kandara Sub-County, out of the 54 targeted schools 7 public secondary schools were sampled for the study. The target respondents were 7 principals, 7 teachers of mathematics, 1 from each school and 125 students were sampled for dyscalculia screening. Research instruments included: questionnaire for mathematics students with dyscalculia, dyscalculia screening instrument, mathematics self -efficacy scale and documentary analysis. Pilot study was conducted in Gaichanjiru Mixed and Kenyoho Secondary schools in Kandara Sub-County, Murang’a County. The validity of research instruments which were used for this study were first tried in a pilot study which helped in clarification of ambiguities prevalent before data collection while the reliability of the research instruments in this study was determined using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient formula. The study used stratified random sampling and purposive sampling to select the schools, teachers and students with dyscalculia respectively. Data for the main study was collected and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively (Mixed method research). Quantitative data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 26.0), while qualitative analysis was done by organizing variables into themes. The study reveals that learners without dyscalculia exhibited high self-efficacy in mathematics while those with dyscalculia displayed low self-efficacy in mathematics. The researcher recommends that Students’ mathematics efficacy should be improved by inviting mentors or people who have succeeded in mathematical field to help boost their morale in the subject.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0781/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Confidence Level and Self-efficacy Beliefs of Mathematics Teachers: Evidence from Sarawak

The purpose of this paper is to examine the confidence level and selfefficacy beliefs of Mathematics teachers, particularly in Kuching and Samarahan, using the instrument adapted from two reliable questionnaires: Trend in International Mathematics and Sciences Study (TIMSS) and Teachers’ Sense of Teaching Mathematics Efficacy Scale (TSES). The respondents consisted of 49 teachers from both primary and secondary schools. The analysis reported that teachers have shown practically high confidence level in teaching mathematics and they closely agreed on their beliefs about their own teaching mathematics efficacy. Further analysis indicated that the mean scores of confidence level and self-efficacy beliefs for the female teachers were slightly higher than the male teachers. Analysis also reported that there were no significant differences in mean scores between teachers’ confidence level and selfefficacy beliefs across gender, highest education attained and years of mathematics teaching. The correlations analysis saw a significant positive strong relationship between teachers’ confidence level and self-efficacy beliefs. These findings provided some evidences to the existing pool of knowledge about teaching efficacy beliefs as well as some distinct and new insights relating to efficacy issues.

Teacher Efficacy as a Multigroup Model Using Latent Class Analysis

Research measuring teacher efficacy suggests that participants are representative of one-efficacy group. Of the few studies, which measures efficacy as a multidimensional occurrence, teachers are presented as having either low or high efficacy. These studies often use mean or median splits to determine low and high efficacy groups. What is of concern is whether there is a significant probability that those in the low and high groups are actually representative of the data Further, a question exists of whether teacher efficacy is statistically representative of one-efficacy group or representative of more than two efficacy groups. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), this study found that mathematics efficacy groups of preservice teachers vary based on where they were in their academic program.