The relationship between chemistry self-efficacy of South African first year university students and their academic performance

Abstract

This study investigated the self-efficacy of first-year Chemistry students at a South African university. The research involved a quantitative survey of 333 students using the College Chemistry Self-Efficacy Scale (CCSS) developed by Uzuntiryaki and Capa Aydin (2009). Descriptive statistics on data for the CCSS scales suggested that students have positive beliefs in their capability to accomplish chemistry tasks. The students scored more strongly on the self-efficacy constructs of cognitive and psychomotor skills than on everyday application. There was a significant difference between students of different professional orientations for cognitive skills and everyday applications, with students enrolled for Chemical Engineering having the highest mean scores for these constructs. A multiple regression analysis was run in order to explore the relationship between chemistry self-efficacy and performance in a chemistry examination. The analysis indicated that cognitive skills significantly predicted chemistry performance, while psychomotor skills and everyday applications had no significant impact. The implications for research and instruction are discussed in terms of the relationship between chemistry self-efficacy and performance.

Self-Efficacy Relationship on Science Achievement amongst National Secondary School Students

“…Students' science self-efficacy encompassed six constructs, namely conceptual understanding, higher-order cognitive skills, practical work, daily application, science communication, and science learning. The descriptive statistics obtained by the students in this study were in line with the findings from previous studies that measured similar constructs with this study (Ramnarain & Ramaila, 2017;Ferrell, Phillips, & Barbera, 2016). The mean values for all the constructs in the science self-efficacy scale ranged from 3.13 to 3.77 and the overall mean was 3.39.…”

“…Studies on the relationship of self-efficacy and achievement have gained attention from worldwide researchers. Self-efficacy is one of the affective factors often associated with academic achievement (Ramnarain & Ramaila, 2017). Kamalimoghaddam et al (2016) conducted a study on the influence of mathematical beliefs on mathematics achievement through mathematical self-efficacy in four schools in Shiraz, Iran.…”

“…There were numerous studies reporting a significant relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement (Nasir & Iqbal, 2019;Ramnarain & Ramaila, 2017;Kamalimoghaddam et al, 2016;de Fátima Goulão, 2014). Academic achievement can influence students not only on the choice of academics at the high school level but also on the selection of college and university admissions (Mbathia, 2005).…”

Self‐beliefs in organic chemistry: Evaluation of a reciprocal causation, cross‐lagged model

“…The study of self‐efficacy and its relationship with achievement is widespread in STEM (Andrew, ; Galyon, Blondin, Yaw, Nalls, & Williams, ; Ramnarain & Ramaila, ; Zusho, Pintrich, & Coppola, ) and broadly across postsecondary education (Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, ; Multon, Brown, & Lent, ; Zajacova, Lynch, & Espenshade, ). Some studies exploring the relationship between self‐efficacy and achievement use a pre‐measure design (Andrew, ; Ramnarain & Ramaila, ), which enables researchers to demonstrate an association, but not the direction of potential causality. Increased support for the relationship between self‐efficacy and achievement comes from studies that utilize a longitudinal research design (Galyon et al, ; Zusho et al, ).…”

“…In the classroom, an initial measure of self-concept can inform instructors of the likelihood of students to succeed on an initial achievement measure, at which point they may choose to implement some of the targeted intervention strategies from literature. 1998; Ramnarain & Ramaila, 2017), which enables researchers to demonstrate an association, but not the direction of potential causality. Increased support for the relationship between self-efficacy and achievement comes from studies that utilize a longitudinal research design (Galyon et al, 2012;Zusho et al, 2003).…”