The relevance of advanced mathematics courses for secondary school mathematics teachers: Voices of Tanzanian teachers

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper, we analyse how mathematics teachers rate the relevance of their university mathematics training in their careers as secondary teachers, focusing on a location usually absent in the international literature, Africa, where pre-service training programmes usually include a significant number of advanced mathematics courses. We map the secondary mathematics content with university course content and validate our model with questionnaires and interviews. Our results indicate that only a small portion of the secondary mathematics content is explicitly addressed in the university courses and that Tanzanian secondary mathematics teachers see their mathematical training as largely unrelated to their practice. This may explain why their perception of what mathematics is seems to be less positive than in other studies.