Factors affecting preservice-teachers' self-efficacy beliefs at Makerere University.

Abstract

Self-efficacy is one of the attributes that a teacher needs in the process of teaching and learning. This makes it important to examine the factors affecting pre-service teachers' self-efficacy beliefs using three main objectives. These included to: examine the effect of gender; the influence of prior achievement and subject specialisation on self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers at Makerere University. The study was undippinned by the socio-cognitive theory and data collection from a sample of 144 pre-service teachers. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data which was descriptively presented. It was analysed through the Chi-square and Friedman Test of hypothesis. Results indicate that gender has significant effects on the self-efficacy beliefs of preservice teachers at the p-value=.000<0.05 with Friedman Test of hypothesis at .000 which made it possible to reject the null hypothesis for the alternative. The study also shows that prior achievement has a significant effect on the self-efficacy of preservice teachers with p-value=.000 with Friedman Test of hypothesis at .000. This also made it possible for the rejection of the null hypothesis. Similar statistical results were obtained on the effect of subject specialisation on the self-efficacy of the preservice teachers. Conclusively, the study looked at the aim for the government of Uganda towards science subjects by policy, practice and approaches. Thus, it recommends tertiary institutions for teacher training to focus on such attributes for the teacher since they partly reveal competent teachers in the system.