The effect of Ghanaian pre-service teachers’ content knowledge on their mathematical knowledge for teaching basic school mathematics

This study measured pre-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) basic school mathematics and found the relationship between the content knowledge and their Mathematical knowledge for teaching. MKT multiple-choice test was administered to 100 pre-service teachers from two colleges to assess their mathematical knowledge for teaching basic school mathematics in three content domains – fractions, number operations and number patterns. The results of the tests revealed that the general performance of the pre-service teachers on the MKT test was low. The responses were analysed using SPSS. The mean scores in the three content domains were – fractions (44.0%), number operations (40.4%) and number patterns (50.2%). The study revealed a moderate relationship (ñ=0.388; p<0.05) between the content knowledge and MKT of pre-service teachers. It was observed that the poor performance was due to the inadequate opportunities pre-service teachers have to practice what they learn in their pedagogy courses in college. Since pre-service teachers MKT is related to their content knowledge more has to be done for the pre-service teachers to see the inter relatedness of the two. It is recommended that the mathematics pedagogy courses should be made more practical, that is, pre-service teachers given ample opportunity to practice what they are going to teach at the basic schools.Keywords: content knowledge, mathematical knowledge for teaching, preservice mathematics teachers, teaching basic mathematic