Relation of parental education and occupation with mathematics self-efficacy and achievement of students

Abstract EN

Parents’ educational level and working statuses, (often considered as important determinants of parenting practices) are mostly found to influence academic performances of the students (Smith et al., 1997).

According to Bandura's social cognitive theory, self-efficacy beliefs influence the choices people make and the courses of action they pursue.

Individuals tend to engag e in tasks about which they feel competent and confident and avoid those in which they do not.

The objective of the present paper is to study the effect of parental education and occupation on self-efficacy belief of mathematics and mathematics achievement tasks in different groups of sc hool students studying in class IV.

The study was conducted on male and female students selected from different districts of West Bengal.

Children’s perceptions of self-efficacy for solving mathematical problems and achievement for that were measured through specially constru cted tests.

The whole data were divided on the basis of parental education into four groups and also the data were divided on the basis of occupation into four groups.

Most of the mothers were found to be house-wife.

One-way ANOVA indicated that self-efficacy belief and achievem ent tasks of students differed with respect to parental education and occupation of fathers.

Mothers’ occupation had no effect on students’ self-efficacy and achievement.

Correlation coefficient showed the significant relationship between self-efficacy and achievement among maxim um groups.

Thus, the present study supports the parental education and occupation are significantly related with self-efficacy belief and achievement of students in mathematics.

It can be said that students’ efficacy judgments can be enhanced if parents are educationally qualified and professionally well-settled.