Effects of teacher certification and experience of student achievement on primary school examination in Belizean primary schools

Abstract

Scope and Method of the Study:

The research questions and hypotheses were tested using a quantitative, non-experimental methodology. This research utilized a causal comparative approach. The purpose of this study is to determine if there exists a difference among independent variables such as school type, school location, teacher certification, teachers' experience and student achievement. In addition, the research seeks to find out if there is a relationship between teachers' content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge and student achievement. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to compute the first four research questions of the study. Differences of the students score measured by Primary School Examination and multiple regression to seek if a relationship exist. The IBM, SPSS 19.0 is used for the statistical analyses of data.

Findings and Conclusions:

Results indicate that there are differences between students' achievement attending mono-grade school and multi-grade school. Differences also exist between students' achievement of student attending urban and rural schools. There are no statistical differences in students' achievement attending schools taught by teachers with 0-5 years or 5 or more years of experience. There is no statistical difference between types of certification and student achievement. The results also indicate that there is no relationship between student achievement and teachers' content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge.