Students’ Locus of Control, Self-Efficacy and Perceived Teacher Efficacy on Mathematics Achievement in Guyana.

Although researchers have reported the predictive impacts of locus of control, student self-efficacy, and perceived teacher efficacy, it was unclear how these variables predict the Mathematic performance of high school students in Guyana. The problem addressed in this study was that although Guyana’s Ministry of Education has provided the requisite textbooks to every student, work sheets, past examination papers with solutions and televised mathematics lessons, secondary school students in Guyana are still performing poorly in the mathematics examination at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if students' self-efficacy, locus of control, and perceived teacher self-efficacy predict students' achievement in mathematics. Correlational research design was adopted for this study. Data was collected using surveys from a sample of 154 girls and 145 boys. The instrument was face validated by three experts. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was determined using Cronbach Alpha method and coefficient of 0.82 was obtained. The findings on hypotheses revealed that The findings of the independent samples t-test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in mathematics scores between genders (M = 13.98, SD = 15.35; M = 14.45, SD = 12.39), t(297) = -0.30, p = .768. These findings resulted in the rejection of Hypothesis 1 and suggest that gender was not a distinguishing factor in mathematics achievement within this sample of secondary school students in Guyana. The performance outcomes of male and female students appeared statistically comparable, indicating relative parity in mathematics achievement across genders.

achievement gaps, gender, Guyana, performance

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