The social cognitive theory of self-efficacy, provides a mechanism for
understanding the information that women rely on when making decisions about their abilities to succeed in physics. Betz and Hackett (1981) published a seminal work on the relationship between self-efficacy and the career choices women and men make. They
studied 200 college students asking about their confidence in ability to complete the educational requirements and job duties for 20 careers, split into those traditionally chosen by women (e.g. dental hygienist, elementary school teacher) and those traditionally chosen by men (e.g. accountant, engineer). Betz and Hackett found that women had significantly lower self-efficacy scores than men with regard to completing the educational requirements of many of the historically male-dominated occupations, with the greatest disparity appearing in engineering. Further, in the same study, Betz and Hackett found that these self-efficacy ratings were related to the type of occupations men and women considered as career options: gender entered as a significant predictor of the range of career options a student would consider, with men more likely to consider historically male-dominated occupations like mathematics and engineering. In another study, Matsui, Matsui, and Ohnishi (1990) used regression analyses to examine the contribution of the four sources to math self-efficacy. Their study showed that gender contributes significantly to the regression model and is not accounted for by any of the four sources of self-efficacy, suggesting that gender is a unique contributor to self-
efficacy development in mathematics with men having higher self-efficacy than women. Physics shares many of the same educational requirements and job duties as both
engineering and mathematics, and as such we consider these findings to be indicative of the relationship between self-efficacy and choice of physics as a career option.
Evidence furthering the argument for using in self-efficacy to understand differences in persistence for women and men comes from studies investigating the influence of gender on the four sources of self-efficacy beliefs. In a theoretical analysis, Hackett and Betz (1981) discussed Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy beliefs, in relation to
how the four sources may be used to understand the self-efficacy differences between women and men in various fields. They suggested that women and men rely on different types of information in their daily lives, and that these differences most likely influence how each group considers its prospects as professionals. Building upon this work, Lent, Lopez, and Bieschke (1991) quantitatively explored the relationship between the four experiential sources and math self-efficacy. They found that gender differences in mathematics self-efficacy could be accounted for by the mastery experience score, suggesting that the development of self-efficacy differs for women and men. Similarly, Zeldin et al. (2000, 2008) examined the relationship between gender and sources of self- efficacy by completing two extensive qualitative studies with men and women who succeeded in STEM careers. Zeldin and Pajares (2000) found that women recalling experiences that impacted their decision to continue in a science or math career described events that were primarily identifiable as vicarious learning and social persuasion
experiences. Subsequently, Zeldin, Britner, and Pajares (2008) found that men drew on personal mastery experiences when evaluating information that influenced their beliefs to pursue a career in the STEM fields. Looking at these three studies, we see that while the results do not all tell the same story, gender differences connect them together.
At this time, little research has been done investigating the development of student self-efficacy in physics, and what we have presents an inconsistent picture. Gungor, Eyilmaz, and Fakioglu (2007) found a negative relationship between physics self-efficacy and physics course achievement. Contradicting these results, Cavallo, Potter, and Rozman (2004) found that self-efficacy best predicted physics conceptual understanding as well as physics grade. Possibly accounting for these differences is the
work of Fencl and Scheel (2005), who found that particular teaching techniques influence self-efficacy development in students in physics classrooms. Cavallo et al. also
investigated the effect of gender, and found women had a lower self-efficacy than men throughout an introductory physics for biology major course. Shaw (2003) also found significant differences in self-efficacy between men and women in a physics-for-non- science-majors class. This small body of literature indicates there is little consensus about the role self-efficacy plays in physics at this point, but from the larger science self-
efficacy literature it is clear that self-efficacy is an information rich and beneficial avenue of study for physics retention. Thus, I identify and address three research questions in this paper. (1) What role does self-efficacy play predicting success for all students in the first semester of the introductory physics class? (2) How can self-efficacy be used to
understand the differences between women who are retained in the first semester
introductory physics course and those who fail the same course? (3) By what means can self-efficacy better explain the disparity between the numbers of women and men who persist in physics?