Preservice mathematics teachers’ self-efficacy

Recent theoretical findings supported by many empirical results show the vital role of teacher self-efficacy in teaching. Teacher self-efficacy makes the most sense when studied in separate teaching fields due to its complex and multidimensional nature. I decided to research the phenomenon of teacher self-efficacy in my master’s thesis because it has not been well researched in Slovenia. Quantitative research was carried out among 83 pre-service teachers of mathematics that attended the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana in 2020/21. Pre-service teachers filled out a questionnaire in the online app 1KA; the data was then analysed using the univariate and bivariate statistical analysis. The results show that pre-service mathematics teachers show the highest self-efficacy in instructional strategies and the lowest level of efficacy in student engagement. Most of them look forward to teaching mathematics due to its emotional connection to the occupation, but they are worried that students will not understand the teaching content. Pre-service teachers with higher self-efficacy have also assessed their ability to acquire higher competencies in their studies. Students who have tutoring experiences have assessed their self-efficacy as higher than students who do not have any tutoring experiences. Students who also study physics have assessed their self-efficacy to be lower than students who also study technology. Students who plan to find employment connected to teaching mathematics have assessed their self-efficacy to be higher than students who do not plan to find employment in teaching