- Title
- Association between teacher confidence and student mathematics outcomes
- Creator
- Qwelani, Noluthando
- Subject
- Human capital
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MCom (Economics)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13955
- Identifier
- vital:39732
- Description
- Teacher attributes such as teacher’s confidence in knowledge are important in the ability to teach. It is further, expected in developing countries that teachers from high socio-economic schools are highly confident in teaching mathematics whilst teachers from low socioeconomic schools are expected to be less confident. Hence, teacher attributes decisions are of great importance in achieving skills development goals. The realisation of the impact teachers’ confidence has on mathematics performance requires an investigation based on multilateral measures of teacher confidence. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyse the impact of teacher abilities on student’s performance on mathematics in South Africa, this will be realised through an analysis of teacher confidence as the main variable and teacher qualifications, teacher characteristics and socio economic status as controlling variables. The study employed Trends in International Mathematics and Sciences studies (TIMSS) 2011 cross sectional data for South Africa. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) econometric technique were employed in analysing the data. The empirical results revealed that majority of South African teachers rated themselves highly confident but showed no significant impact in the performance of students. This implies that South African teachers who produce poor student’s performance are not open about their lack of confidence in teaching mathematics. However, from the student’s perspective, teacher confidence showed a strong impact on students’ performance in mathematics. The third findings were that, teachers who are happy as educators do not have a significant impact at all. The empirical results also revealed that teachers who felt they wee being allocated more than enough time to teach mathematics showed a strong negative relationship with student performance when compared to teachers who felt otherwise. The findings from the study imply that an open policy should be encouraged in which teachers are encouraged to openly express their views and any shortcomings. This will make it easier to identify the best intervention strategy on helping the teachers. Based on the findings again, it is encouraged that periodic training of mathematical teachers be encouraged. This is likely to boost teacher’s confidence and improve the mathematical results in the country.
- Format
- 131 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Management and Commerce
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of Economics
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | QWELANI N 201104838 MCOM.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |