Colleges of Education Pre-service Mathematics Teachers' Attitude as Correlate of Self-efficacy in Learning mathematics in Northwest Nigeria

This paper examined pre-service mathematics teachers’ attitude toward learning mathematics and their mathematics self-efficacy in learning mathematics among Nigerian colleges of education pre-service teachers. The study employed correlational design, questionnaires were distributed through personal visit to all the 366 final year pre-service mathematics teachers of COEs in the northwest, Nigeria who were selected as sample for this study from the population of 2761 colleges of education pre-service mathematics teachers using Cochran formula. The questionnaire used for this study was adapted from previously validated instruments after receiving written permission from the original authors of the used questionnaire. Cronbach alpha value of 0.86 was obtained as internal consistency of the instrument. The data collected was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation). The findings of this study revealed that pre-service teachers’ attitude towards learning mathematics is high and there exist a significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ attitude towards learning mathematics and their mathematics self-efficacy among other findings. The researcher’s recommendations among others is government and all stakeholders in education need to support and retain these highly confident and well determined future qualified mathematics teachers in education sector as they will play a vital role in solving problem of poor achievement in mathematics and low desire to accept mathematics as a course of study at tertiary institutions by students, which previous studies attributed to negative attitude and low self-efficacy in learning mathematics.