Gender, self-efficacy belief, sources of self-efficacy associated to academic achievements in applied mathematics: The case of first year engineering students of South Western Universities of Ethiopia

Research works the relationship between students’ mathematics self-efficacy and academic performances are scarce in African context. This study, therefore, is conducted to fill this gap. 218 first year engineering students completed scales on self-efficacy belief and sources of self-efficacy beliefs in math. The result indicated moderate mean on both variables. 19.3% of the variance on first semester grade in applied Math I explained by performance experience; and 21.4 % of the variance on first semester grade in applied Math I was explained by students self efficacy belief in math I. The independent sample t test revealed statistically significant mean differences between male and female students on mean scores of self efficacy belief in math I and first semester academic grade in applied math I but not statistically significant mean differences on all of sources of self efficacy belief in Math. Further study on the applicability and generalizeability of the findings with more rigorous design in other contexts is one of the recommendations.