The relationship between grade 11 students' achievement in trigonometric functions and their teachers' content knowledge

Abstract

The study investigates the relationship between grade 11 students' achievement in trigonometric functions and their teachers 'content knowledge of trigonometric functions. The aim was to know if students' poor achievement in trigonometric functions was as a result of teachers' lack of content knowledge of the topic. All participants wrote the same cognitive test that was aligned with the relevant curriculum. Pearson product moment index showed a statistically significant relationship between student achievement and teacher content knowledge and linear regression analysis indicated that 76.8 % of the variation in the student achievement is explained by teacher content knowledge. The study affirms the importance of teacher content knowledge in student learning.