Mathematics Self-Efficacy in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: The Role of Parental Involvement and Teaching Practice

Abstract

Abstract The study focuses on the internationally acknowledged challenge of declining learning attitudes in mathematics. This issue is explored in this study with three main aims: 1) to construct and validate measures of mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics-related attitudes, perceptions of parental involvement and perceptions of teaching practices in mathematics for use with Chinese-Macau secondary school students, 2) to explore the relationship of Macau secondary students’ mathematics self-efficacy with their characteristics and perceptions about home and school learning environments (i.e., perception of parental involvement and school mathematics teaching), and 3) to investigate the cross-cultural comparability of mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics disposition (a subdimension under mathematics-related attitude construct) and perception of school mathematics teaching between Macau and U.K. secondary students (based on comparative secondary data from a large-scale U.K. study; N=1746). As part of the Macau measures validation, a mixed-method study comprising a survey with questionnaires (N=419) and semi-structured interviews with Macau students (N=10) and mathematics teachers (N=2) was employed. The thesis thus addresses several knowledge gaps in the literature, and in particular: 1) the lack of valid measures of mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics-attitudes, perception of parental involvement and school mathematics teaching appropriate for use in Macau, 2) the lack of studies about how Macau students’ mathematics-attitudes are related to parental involvement and school mathematics teaching, and mathematics achievement, and 3) the limited number of investigations of cross-cultural comparability of mathematics self-efficacy, and other relevant constructs when considering Macau and U.K. students. The Rasch measurement model was used for both Macau constructs validation and cross-cultural comparability analysis. After establishing the validity of the Macau measures, statistical modelling (with generalised linear models) of Macau students’ mathematics self-efficacy was performed to model the relationships of this construct with other designated constructs and students’ characteristics. Measure validation revealed good/acceptable psychometric properties for all the resulting Macau measures. It also supported the cross-cultural comparability (via measurement invariance tests) of the mathematics self-efficacy measure (with a precondition that the items in the measure were task-specific) with Macau and U.K. secondary students. In contrast, measurement invariance of mathematics disposition and perception of school mathematics teaching construct could not be established in this study. The statistical modelling indicated that Macau students’ mathematics self-efficacy was only significantly related to their year-group, mathematics-related attitudes, past mathematics grades and mathematics achievement, among the investigated explanatory variables. The impact and significance arising from the findings of this study stem first from the novel Macau measures which are appropriate for use within the Macau secondary school context. The modelling results of Macau students’ mathematics self-efficacy, in relation to the explanatory variables, provide practical implications to help buffer the negative impacts from usually unalterable familial (e.g., socioeconomic background and parental education) and school (e.g., school-types and social economic status) factors in education. Finally, the study suggests a robust methodology implementation enabling a comparison of mathematics self-efficacy between Macau and U.K. secondary students.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Pauline Prevett (Supervisor) & Maria Pampaka (Supervisor)