Reconceptualising teacher knowledge in domain specific terms

Abstract

Literature is replete with different conceptualizations of teacher knowledge, each with their implications on teaching practices. Pivotal among these are conceptualizations of content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The paper argues that until now, the various conceptualizations of teacher knowledge have been mostly general and not domain specific enough. In addition, researchers who have relied on these earlier conceptualizations have mainly concerned themselves with teacher knowledge qualitatively. In an attempt to shift from these general conceptualizations and the qualitative measures of teacher knowledge, the study on which this paper is based relied on the Knowledge of Algebra for Teaching (KAT) project’s conceptualization of teacher knowledge for teaching algebra and an adaptation of one of the instruments. Two hundred and nine participants comprising 189 prospective and 20 in-service high school mathematics teachers in Ghana took part in the study. From the findings of the study, this paper argues that effective mathematics teachers do not only use the individual conceptualized knowledge but sometimes also blend these types of knowledge into somewhat new forms of knowledge. Consequently, the paper proposes an elaboration of the KAT project’s domain specific conceptualization of teacher knowledge that recognizes overlapping packages of knowledge and lends itself to being assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively.