The development of a self-efficacy scale for mathematical modeling competencies
Journal Title: International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education - Year 2017, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
Mathematical modeling has come into prominence during the last few decades in many countries’ mathematics teaching curricula. It combines real life situations with mathematical context. Although evaluating students’ mathematical modeling performances with a unique Likert type instrument is questionable, having an instrument about their self-efficacy beliefs in mathematical modeling may help to comment about their ideas related to their competencies in mathematical modeling. The purpose of this study is to develop a reliable and valid measurement scale to determine mathematical modeling self-efficacy of mathematics teacher candidates. For this purpose, the draft and final form of the scale were applied to a total of 562 pre-service elementary mathematics teachers from various public universities in Turkey. The findings of study revealed that the scale is unidimensional according to the results of exploratory factor analysis. The unidimensionality of the scale was validated by confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability of mathematical modeling self-efficacy scale was very high (.97). Finally, it was found that this scale is an appropriate measurement tool to evaluate students’ self-efficacy beliefs on their mathematical modeling competencies. Some suggestions related to the scale and for further studies were given at the end.
Authors and Affiliations
Ilhan Koyuncu, Cem Oktay Guzeller, Didem Akyuz
Comparing Physics Textbooks in Terms of Assessment and Evaluation Tools
Assessment and evaluation instruments provide teachers the opportunity of shaping education in the beginning, contributing to education during the process and evaluating education at the end of the process. Textbooks, on...
The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS): The Study of Validity and Reliability
The aim of this research is to adapt the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (Adams et al., 2006) to Turkish and to examine its psychometric properties. The research was conducted on 400 9th grade students f...
The Dif Identification in Constructed Response Items Using Partial Credit Model
The study was to identify the load, the type and the significance of differential item functioning (DIF) in constructed response item using the partial credit model (PCM). The data in the study were the students’ instrum...
Investigating Different Theory-Based Differential Item Functioning Methods Under Different Scoring Situations
This study intended to investigate the operations of various theory-based Differential Item Functioning (DIF) methods under different scoring situations. In this context, data obtained from conducting a Verbal Reasoning...
The development of a self-efficacy scale for mathematical modeling competencies
Mathematical modeling has come into prominence during the last few decades in many countries’ mathematics teaching curricula. It combines real life situations with mathematical context. Although evaluating students’ math...