Effects of Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Students' Achievement

Abstract

This study focused on the effect of teacher's pedagogical content knowledge on students’ achievement in mathematics of grade IX students of Rautahat district. The objectives of this study were to compare the achievement of students taught by teacher having PCK and teacher without having PCK and to explore classroom behavior of teacher having PCK and teacher without having PCK. This study is based on mixed research design.For quantitative data, 30/30 students taught by teacher having PCK and teacher without having PCK were taken from the annual results of each year 2070, 2071 and 2072. In this way, 90/90 students of both teachers having Roll No. 1-30 were selected for the study. For qualitative data,the researcher selected two teachers, one having PCK and another without having PCK. The qualitative data was collected from interview and class observation of the sample teachers. Mean, standard deviation and z-test were used for the analysis of quantitative data and the qualitative data analyzed by thematic approach method. In comparison,teacher having PCK has more knowledge about the organization of lesson,management of classroom environment,understanding of student psychology,skill to use teaching materials,skill to use teaching methods and use of student evaluation than the teacher without having PCK. Also its implementation side of teacher having PCK is better than the teacher without having PCK. It means that the pedagogical content knowledge and its implementation side of teacher having PCK is better than the teacher without having PCK. Also according to the annual result of combined three years 2070, 2071 and 2072,the mean of the achievement scores of the students taught by teacher having PCK and teacher without having PCK are 66.56 and 51.56 respectively and the calculated z-value is 6.56 which ix is greater than the critical value z0.05 = 1.645. That means the achievement of students taught by teacher having PCK is higher than the achievement of students taught by teacher without having PCK and there is significance difference between the achievement of students taught by teacher having PCK and teacher without having PCK. From this, it was declared that the achievement of students taught by teacher having PCK became higher than the achievement of students taught by teacher without having PCK due to the pedagogical content knowledge. Hence the researcher concluded that teacher's pedagogical content knowledge affects on the achievement of students and play a vital role to deliver PCK in their teaching.