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

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Oscar David Marcenaro‐Gutierrez,Luis Alejandro Lopez‐Agudo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12259

South African Journal of Economics Vol. 88:3 September 2020

doi: 10.1111/saje.12259

267

© 2020 Economic Society of South Africa

DOES TEACHER SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE CONTRIBUTE TO

STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN DEVELOPING

AND LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES?

OSCAR DAVID MARCENARO-GUTIERREZ† AND LUIS ALEJANDRO LOPEZ-AGUDO†,*

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.

JEL Classification: O15, I21, I28

Keywords: developing country, least developed country, student academic achievement, teacher subject

knowledge

1. INTRODUCTION

Strong evidence has been found about the role that education plays as one of the corner-

stones of socio-economic development, to the extent that it increases a population’s cog-

nitive skills, which are related to income, the distribution of this income and economic

growth (Hanushek and Wößmann, 2007, 2012). Consequently, providing good-quality

education and ensuring its supply and distribution becomes an important objective for

all countries.

However, this objective has to be approached from a different perspective depending

on the circumstances and development level of each region, bearing in mind the vast

* Corresponding author: Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada

(Estadística y Econometría), Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de

Málaga, Plaza de El Ejido s/n, 29013, Málaga (España), Spain. E-mail: lopezagudo@uma.es

† Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Estadística y Econometría), Facultad de Ciencias

Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Málaga

South African Journal

of Economics

268 South African Journal of Economics Vol. 88:3 September 2020

© 2020 Economic Society of South Africa

differences between the educational needs of developed, developing and least developed

countries.1 Following Ridker (1994), developing and least developed countries have pro-

gressed very slowly, including reverse development in school enrolment and education

quality in the 80 and 90s. Furthermore, even when students finish primary school in

these countries, this does not imply that they will have the competencies of the official

curriculum for that level of education (Bold et al., 2017). In developing and least devel-

oped countries education plays a particularly relevant role in many essential issues, such

as, e.g. the health of the population. In relation to this, many studies have found a positive

relationship between the propagation of AIDS and low levels of education (Ardington

et al., 2014), this lack of education and the related health problems resulting in low la-

bour market productivity (Chicoine, 2012). In addition, in these countries education

also plays a relevant role in gender equality insofar as it gives women the possibility of

enroling in schools, which is linked to many other aspects of the development of societies

including greater fairness, equity or productivity (Anyanwu, 2016). In this context, this

research study focuses on three of these countries: Botswana (a developing country) and

Lesotho and Zambia (both least developed countries).

In particular, we focus on the role that teacher subject knowledge has on student

performance. This “knowledge” specifically refers to skills or competences that both stu-

dents and teachers possess. However, the creators of the database used (Hungi et al.,

2010; Hungi et al., 2011) and subsequent research carried out with it (e.g. Spaull, 2011;

Shepherd, 2013; Spaull, 2013; Bietenbeck et al., 2018) denote these skills and compe-

tences as knowledge, terminology which we follow for homogeneity and comparison pur-

poses. In general, it seems common sense that teachers matter and to expect that pupils

will achieve more with a highly qualified teacher – who possesses the necessary knowledge

to teach – than with an average or low qualified teacher (Bold et al., 2017). In this respect,

Shulman (1986, 1987) establishes a theoretical framework in which the importance of

teacher knowledge is highlighted. This concept has been widely revised by many authors

and checked for its effect on student academic achievement (e.g. Grossman, 1990; Hills

et al., 2005; Ab Kadir, 2017; among others). However, in spite of the belief regarding the

importance of highly qualified teachers, the empirical evidence on the strength of this

issue has not yet been settled.

In the influential McKinsey & Company report, Barber and Mourshed (2007) con-

cluded that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers”

(7). In this sense, teacher quality and its relationship with pupil performance are at the

1 This is a classification established by the United Nations to rank countries according to their

level of socio-economic development, human and institutional capacities, income distribution

and domestic financial resources, in order to orient development policies. In particular, the follow-

ing variables are used: countries’ per capita gross national income (GNI), human assets (which

considers the percentage of undernourished population, mortality rate for children aged five or

under, the gross secondary school enrolment ratio and adult literacy rate) and economic vulnera-

bility to external shocks (i.e. population size, remoteness, merchandise export concentration, share

of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, share of population in low elevated coastal zones, instability

of exports of goods and services, victims of natural disasters and instability of agricultural produc-

tion). In this classification, developed countries are placed at the highest level of development,

followed by developing countries and, finally, least developed countries. More information can be

found at the United Nations (2020) website.