An Investigation into Senior High School Mathematics Teachers’ Knowledge for Teaching Algebra

Abstract

Research is replete with the fact that teacher knowledge affects student performance. However, the issue of which aspects of teacher knowledge influence student achievement has been a thorny one among researchers. This is partly due to the fact that over the years, several attempts at conceptualising teacher knowledge have produced domain neutral constructs making them virtually impossible to be accurately measured. As a result, several attempts to measure teacher knowledge have relied on proxy measures such as the number of university courses taken, the type of degree the teachers’ have etc. This study is posited on the fact that, instead of relying on proxy measures, there is the need for re-conceptualization of teacher knowledge in ways that is not only domain specific but also allows its components to be measured. In the early to mid- 2000s, researchers of the Knowledge of Algebra for Teaching (KAT) project attempted to do exactly this by hypothesizing three types of knowledge and developing items to measure it. Using the KAT conceptualization as a framework, this study was designed to investigate whether the three types of teacher knowledge hypothesized in the KAT framework will be corroborated. Two hundred and fifty two teachers from 40 senior high schools in three regions participated in this study. The cross-sectional survey was the main design used. Factor analysis conducted on data from this study did not only corroborate the three knowledge types hypothesised in the KAT framework but also permitted a modification to be made in the framework. Furthermore, analyses of data showed that in terms of the hypothesized knowledge types, while background in education did not significantly affect the quality of teacher knowledge, teachers with ten years and above teaching experience were significantly better. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that further studies be conducted to corroborate the seven factors that emerged in this study from the reconceptualization of the KAT framework.