MEASUREMENT OF TEACHER KNOWLEDGE: UNEARTHING HIDDEN DIFFERENCES AMONG DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS IN GHANA (Published)
Literature on teacher competence and student performance is replete with arguments that graduates of teacher education programmes feel better prepared for their job and can positively affect their students’ achievement than those who enter teaching without adequate teacher education background. These issues of pedagogical preparation, subject matter preparation and experience are especially important in the case of Ghana due to the different categories of mathematics teachers at the senior high school level. Using the causal comparative research design, this study investigated the differences in the knowledge for teaching algebra among different categories of senior high school mathematics teachers in Ghana. In all, 38 in-service and 301 prospective senior high school mathematics teachers; comprising 132, 44, and 125 respective final year university students majoring in mathematics, statistics and mathematics education participated in the study. Analysis of data from this study revealed that in-service high school teachers in Ghana performed significantly better than each sub-group of the prospective mathematics teachers who participated in the study. Recommendations have been made on the need to provide more real classroom experiences that have the potential of helping prospective teachers to improve their content and pedagogical content knowledge.
Keywords: Differences in teacher knowledge, Mathematics teacher knowledge, Measurement of knowledge for teaching high school algebra, Value added by teacher education