Abstract:

Introduction: Knowledge about teaching mathematics remains a contentious issue in the preparation of pre-service teachers. This study assessed factors influencing pre-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) mathematics in Ghanaian basic schools.

Methods: The cross-sectional survey design was adopted for this study. A total of 998 pre-service teachers from ten (10) public colleges of education were sampled via multi-stage sampling technique for the study. Structured questionnaire and unstructured observation schedule were used to conduct the survey. Secondary data was also collected in the form of mathematics test results. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22 was used to analyse the data using descriptive statistics (frequency count, percentage) and inferential statistics (Pearson’s correlation, multiple regression, exploratory factor analysis).

Results: The study revealed that many pre-service teachers in Ghanaian public colleges of education had weak mathematics content knowledge. The following factors influenced MKT of the pre-service teachers: gender, ways of imparting mathematics knowledge, perception about mathematics as a subject, perception about mathematics teaching and learning and attitudes towards mathematics (p < .05).

Conclusions: This study exploring the factors that influence pre-service teachers’ MKT suggests that, to be able to build effective mathematics teacher base in any basic school, there must be effective training on factors like gender, perception, and attitude. There is therefore the need for the National Council for Tertiary Education to emphasis on factors that influence MKT besides the content of the college of education mathematics curriculum.

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