A self-efficacy analysis of the effects of reflective-impulsive conceptual tempo on children's mathematics computation skills

The general purposes of this study were to investigate relationships between tutoring style and self-efficacy, as well as relationships between self-efficacy and self-efficacy ratings. The specific purposes of the study were to investigate the relationship between Participant Modeling and Didactic treatments on self-efficacy ratings, as well as the relationship between self-efficacy and subsequent math computation performance. In -addition to investigating these factors, their effects relative to the particular cognitive style of the students was measured.There were 75 subjects who participated in the study. Permission slips were sent to 183 fourth graders in the three participating schools. A total of seven classes were involved. Permission slips were returned by 109 children, all of who were administered the MFFT. The median split procedure was used-to classify the children into two groups, 34 impulsive, and 41 reflective. The children were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups or a control group.Three levels of tutoring comprised the active independent variable and two levels of conceptual tempo made up the independent attribute variable. Data were processed for 75 of the original 77 subjects, as two were lost due to attrition.The research design utilized was a 3 X 2 fixed effects factorial design. The final hypothesis was measured by a Pearson Product Moment Correlation utilizing the Fisher Z statistic.ConclusionsAnalysis of the data revealed that there was a significant relationship between self-efficacy ratings for 1D problems and treatment type. Both the participant modeling and didactic treatment groups showed significant main effects at the .05 level.The treatment effects did not reach significance at the 2D and M2D difficulty levels.There were no significant relationships between the reflective-impulsive conceptual tempo and persistence regardless of difficulty level. This indicates that conceptual tempo is probably not a factor with regard to persistence in problem solving and is not related significantly to this aspect of self-efficacy theory.Finally, the data analysis revealed that self-efficacy ratings were not reliable predictors of subsequent math computation performance regardless of difficulty level or conceptual tempo.Thesis (D. Ed.