Effects of Mastery Learning Strategy on Self-Efficacy Concept of Secondary School Mathematics Students in Machakos County, Kenya

Mathematics is considered as a vital subject that supports the development of critical and logical thinking. It provides effective power to analyze, describe and understand the sciences hence fundamental subject in the school curriculum globally as an instrument for the development of all other sciences. However, majority of students across the world dislike mathematics and stay away from many careers related to mathematics. The students’ lack of interest for mathematics could be attributed to poor quality of instruction and the instructional method deployed but not lack of student’s ability to learn. The objective of this study were to investigate the impact of mastery learning strategy on enabling the students improve on their self-efficacy when solving a mathematics problem in Kenyan secondary schools located in Machakos sub-county. To achieve the objectives a sample of one hundred and fifty four (154) form two students from two schools were randomly placed into either the group taught by using Mastery Learning Strategy (MLS), the experimental group or those taught using Conventional Group Learning (CGL), the control group. The two groups were subjected to the level of self-efficacy test before and after the intervention of MLS. The Chi-Square and Z scores test statistics were used to test whether the two groups’ level of self-efficacy differed significantly at α=0.05 significance level. Based on the study findings, slightly more than half, 60% of the control class had clear set self-efficacies elements compared to 91.8% of the experimental group. The proportionate difference was statistically significant at α=0.05 significance level with the calculated chi-square value y2=15.2 which was greater than the critical value of 3.84 at α=0.05 with 2 df. Therefore the MLS was recommended as a sure strategy to boost the morale and self-efficacy among the students. The study recommended a replication of the research to another region and respondents to ascertain the validity and reliability of the findings.