Self efficacy is a crucial concept to understand people behavior. To define what exactly self-efficacy is, many attempts can be encountered in related literature. Bandura (1977) defined self-efficacy as the perceptions of individual related to his/her level of accomplishment a task. It is a well-known fact that the individuals having high or moderate self-efficacy towards a task or something they make more effort to achieve, they are more patient, and they are more direct to the task. Due to these facts the concept of self-efficacy plays an important role in education.
Mathematics self-efficacy is identified as a situational assessment of an individual’s confidence in his/her ability to perform a specific task (Hackett & Betz, 1989). In a similar vein, computer self-efficacy can be defined as a self belief about using computer individually in daily life (Bay?rtepe & Tüzün, 2007). On the other hand, computer literacy contains basic computer knowledge and skills (Korkut & Akkoyunlu, 2008).
In this study, it is aimed to determine the relationship between preservice mathematics teachers self-efficacy towards mathematics, self-efficacy towards computer and their knowledge about computer literacy.
This study addressed mainly the following research questions:
1. What is the self-efficacy towards mathematics of preservice mathematics teachers?
2. What is the self-efficacy towards computer of preservice mathematics teachers?
3. What is the computer literacy knowledge of preservice mathematics teachers?
4. Is there a relationship between the self-efficacy towards mathematics and computer literacy knowledge of preservice mathematics teachers?
5. Is there a relationship between the self-efficacy towards computer and computer literacy knowledge of preservice mathematics teachers?
6. Is there a relationship between the self-efficacy towards mathematics and self-efficacy towards computer of preservice mathematics teachers?
The study group consisted of 75 seniors (43 female, 32 male) from one of the biggest state university in Ankara. Three instruments were administered to the participants at the beginning of “Computer Assisted Mathematics Course”. Self-Efficacy towards Mathematics Scale which was developed by Umay (2001) contains 12 items. Self-Efficacy towards Computer Scale (A?kar & Umay, 2002) has 18 items, and Computer Literacy Scale (K?l?nç & Salman, 2006) has 24 items. According to the findings of the study, it can be concluded that, the self-efficacy towards mathematics and computer of the study group are high, and there is a significant correlation between self-efficacy towards mathematics and computer.