Pre-service teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in teaching geometric transformation

Abstract

This study investigated pre-service teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge in teaching geometric transformation. Eighty-two pre-service teachers from two Colleges of Education in the Ashanti region of Ghana consisted the sample size. The study was a quantitative study which employed survey as a strategy of enquiry with a Geometric Transformation Achievement Test (GTAT) as the instrument used for data collection. The GTAT was given to pre-service teachers to identify how knowledgeable they are in content and pedagogical knowledge in geometric transformation. The results indicated a high level of content knowledge but low level of pedagogical content knowledge among the pre-service teachers in geometric transformation. A correlation analysis was also performed to identify the relationship between pre-service teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge in geometric transformation and the results indicated a weak positive significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, r (82) = .044, p < .05, two–tailed. It was therefore recommended that geometric transformation content and pedagogical courses at the Colleges of Education be made more practical and that pre-service teachers should be given ample opportunity to practice what they are going to teach at the basic level.