International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XII, December 2022|ISSN 2454-6186 www.rsisinternational.org Page 592 Mathematics Teacher Education Curriculum in Zambia: Lecturers’, Students’ and In-service Teachers’ Perspective Robert Changwe The University of Zambia, School of Education, Department of Language and Social Sciences Education. P.O Box 32379 Lusaka, Zambia Abstract: Quality teaching of classroom mathematics in schools begin with exposing student teachers to a quality teacher education curriculum during their teacher education programme. The rationale for this study was to analyse the mathematics teacher education curriculum by reflecting on lecturers’, students and in-service teachers’ perceptions. Mixed methods design particularly the convergent parallel design was used. Questionnaires were distributed to former university students who were teaching mathematics in Lusaka and Kitwe district of Zambia as well as final year student teachers who were on the programme and had done their school teaching experience. In addition, some teachers, lecturers of mathematics content and mathematics teaching methods were interviewed. The researcher used description and thematic analysis in analysing qualitative data and quantitative data was analysed through the use of the statistical package for social sciences version 20 where means and independent samples t-tests were used. The study key findings reviewed that the way teachers of mathematics were prepared for their professional classroom job was inappropriate as the curriculum they were exposed to during their teacher education programme was loosely linked to what the student teachers were expected to teach upon graduation in Zambian schools. This affected the way mathematics was taught in secondary schools. Besides, the mismatch in the two curricula led to teachers of mathematics with diplomas to divert to other teaching subjects when upgrading their studies to a degree level. Hence, it was recommended that the higher institutions of learning needed to consider the ministerial directive by reviewing the mathematics teacher education curriculum after thoroughly conducting a job analysis. It was also recommended that the Ministry of Education needed to reinforce the already existing continuous professional development to bridge the gap between the two curricula. Keywords: Teacher education, mathematical knowledge for teaching, quality teaching, job analysis. I. INTRODUCTION he sustainable development goal number four addresses the aspect of quality provision of education. If any country is to experience quality teaching and learning in the classroom, there is need to begin with quality provision of education to student teachers in various institutions of higher learning. Mulenga (2015) considered teachers to be the most critical resources of any formal education this is because of their key role in facilitating learners’ acquisition of desirable knowledge, skills, values and attitudes. Based on the expected quality of teachers graduating from colleges and universities, the MoE (1992) documented that the qualities and competencies displayed by teachers in their respective schools clearly reflects the effectiveness of the institutions from where they did their teacher education. Similarly, Bishop (1985) also argued that the quality of the teacher education curriculum is as good as the quality of its teachers. This means that the development of the teacher education curriculum need to be done with care bearing in mind all the competencies that the products of such a curriculum are expected to practice upon graduation. The study by Changwe and Mulenga (2018) revealed that the teacher education curriculum at one of the Zambian Universities was developed without conducting job analysis which led to student teachers to acquire some competences that were at variance with the secondary school mathematics curriculum. The question that demands a response is, could this mismatch have led to poor classroom teaching of mathematics and consequently poor learner performance in national assessments? This question has been partly answered by the study done by Changwe and Mulenga (2018) where it was revealed that the inappropriate acquisition of mathematical content knowledge by student teachers contributed to inappropriate teaching of classroom mathematics. Besides, ECZ (2016: 3) report noted that “performance of learners in mathematics at all levels over the years, has been poor. The major challenge faced by most learners is a lack of masterly of content.” The report further revealed that the poor performance in mathematics at all levels could be partly accredited to the way teachers mark classwork and provide feedback to the learners. This means that the way teachers of mathematics conducted the whole teaching and learning of classroom mathematics had affected the performance of learners in the subject. Scholars who are behind scrutinising the quality of the product of the education programme namely: Biggs (2001); Cochran- Smith (2005) and Roofe and Miller (2013) have all argued that if the curriculum was designed to clearly achieve defined outcomes then it would increase the likelihood of student teachers to successfully perform well in their future responsibilities of teaching. Based on this assertion, the researcher in this study analysed various perceptions of student teachers, teachers and lecturers in order to have the general overview of the mathematics teacher education curriculum in T