Beliefs of Efficacy and Elementary Teachers ’ Computational Skills

Abstract: 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