Does Teacher Subject Knowledge Contribute to Student Academic Performance in Developing and Least Developed Countries?

Oscar David Marcenaro‐Gutierrez and Luis Alejandro Lopez‐Agudo
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Oscar Marcenaro Gutierrez

South African Journal of Economics, 2020, vol. 88, issue 3, 267-297

Abstract: Little is known about the causal impact of teacher knowledge on student performance. In this research paper we intend to approach the potential causal effect (i.e. going beyond correlation) of sixth grade teachers’ knowledge on their students’ academic achievement for three Sub‐Saharan African countries. To achieve this, we have used the heterogeneity of teachers’ subject knowledge and students’ correspondent academic achievement within‐student between‐subjects using student fixed effects. Concretely, our work is based on previous research by Bietenbeck, Piopiunik and Wiederhold. Compared to them, we do not use countries that lack representative information after keeping only those students taught by the same teacher for the subjects under analysis. This enables us to obtain more reliable results on this issue. Our results indicate that teacher subject knowledge in reading and mathematics does not have a significant influence on student academic achievement in these subjects for the countries under scrutiny. Many robustness checks have corroborated this conclusion, which contrasts with the positive effect found by Bietenbeck, Piopiunik and Wiederhold.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12259

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:88:y:2020:i:3:p:267-297

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-2280

Access Statistics for this article

South African Journal of Economics is currently edited by Philip A. Black

More articles in South African Journal of Economics from Economic Society of South Africa Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().