Analysis of student beliefs in a tertiary preparatory mathematics course

Every year approximately 800 students enrol in the tertiary preparatory course TPP7181 at the University of Southern Queensland. Successful completion of this course will allow students to enrol in either further preparatory level mathematics courses or undergraduate study. For many of the students enrolled in this course, the study of mathematics was undertaken quite some time ago and usually in a school setting. Drop out rates for this course are quite high and it is hypothesized that motivation may be a key factor in determining student success or otherwise. In this study scales assessing self-efficacy were utilized in an attempt to gauge aspects of the motivation of students enrolled in the course. Initial results suggest that only specific measures of student confidence predict their performance and that both gender and age mediate the strength of this prediction.