School Performance: a case study on the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs in physic and the didactic contract

Abstract

The Self-efficacy beliefs have been consolidated in recent decades as an important predictor of students' academic performance at the most different levels of education. In this study, we sought to analyze the relationship between the levels of self-efficacy of students in the third year of high school and their different behaviors regarding their school performance in Physics from the institution of a Didactic Contract. We conducted a qualitative research, through a case study, with two students from a public school in the state of São Paulo. During the four-month period, students' participation in physics classes was recorded. After the end of the recordings, the students, with the best school performance, participated in a semi-structured interview. We observed different behaviors of the two students participants. While one of them showed great commitment during the proposed activities, the other showed a much-dispersed behavior. However, the two individuals always received the highest performance scores in the discipline of Physics. For the first student, the recognition of her abilities by the teacher and her family, in addition to the prospect of actively participating in the teaching and learning process, fueled his level of self-efficacy in physics. The second student established a standard of comparison with the other classmates, demonstrating that the context of the Physics classes was below their real abilities, which will eventually justify their ineffective actions during classes. Thus, we could observe different learning strategies for the maintenance of the Didactic Contract that did not always allow a closer approach to physical knowledge, however, they promoted support for their self-efficacy beliefs in Physics.

Keywords

• crenças de autoeficácia
• contrato didático
• contrato diferencial, desempenho escolar
• ensino de física