Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228893 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 20-05
Publisher: 
University of Bern, Department of Economics, Bern
Abstract: 
Education is one of the key resources in the fight against poverty. While substantial progress has been made in terms of school enrollment, evidence suggests that educational quality is still alarmingly low in many developing countries. Various explanations have been suggested, but one very obvious factor in the educational production function has received surprisingly little attention: the content knowledge of teachers. For this study, we administered an exam-type assessment to a representative sample of 224 primary school teachers in Morazán, El Salvador. The average teacher scored 47% correct answers on 50 questions covering the official math curriculum for second to sixth graders. Overall, our results point to an even more worrying situation than suggested by previous findings based on indirect measures of content-related teacher skills in several African countries.
Subjects: 
teacher content knowledge
quality of education
primary education
El Salvador
JEL: 
I21
I25
J24
O15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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