HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE FOR TEACHING ALGEBRA: A COMPARISON OF GHANA AND THE US.

Abstract

Ghanaians complain about falling standards of their students in mathematics and point, for instance, to the poor performance of their eighth graders in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) since 2003 when Ghana’s eighth graders began participating. Since student performance has been known to be related to teacher knowledge, this study was set up to investigate the knowledge base of senior high school teachers in Ghana for teaching algebra and compare it to that of their counterparts in the US. In all 339 and 3,841 of teachers in Ghana and US respectively agreed to participate in the study. Analysis of the performance of the two group indicated that the US teachers performed significantly better than their Ghanaian counterparts. Implications of this finding have been discussed. In addition, recommendations for practice and further research have also been provided.