Beliefs of Efficacy and Elementary Teachers’ Computational Skills

Early mathematics content that is taught in elementary school lays the foundation for students’ advanced mathematics performance. Thus, researchers show it is important that pre-service elementary teachers build a strong background in numbers and operations, as well as efficacy beliefs in mathematic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Vanessa Hinton, Margaret Flores, Kate Simmons
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Georgia Southern University 2014-06-01
Series:Georgia Educational Researcher
Subjects:
Online Access:https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gerjournal/vol11/iss1/2
Description
Summary:Early mathematics content that is taught in elementary school lays the foundation for students’ advanced mathematics performance. Thus, researchers show it is important that pre-service elementary teachers build a strong background in numbers and operations, as well as efficacy beliefs in mathematics instruction. This study expands the literature in the investigation of pre-service teachers’ efficacy beliefs and mathematical knowledge by making comparisons of pre-service elementary teachers’ views of efficacy to their overall ability in computation skills. Results show that elementary pre-service teachers who demonstrated lower scores in efficacy beliefs also had significantly lower computation scores. Implications for teacher preparation are also discussed.
ISSN:2471-0059