High-Quality Teacher Professional Development and Classroom Teaching Practices

This paper examines the contribution of high-quality teacher professional development (TPD) to the strategies teachers report using to improve students’ learning in the classroom. What was taught in this TPD, and how it was delivered to teachers is compared across the 35 educational systems with available data in TALIS 2013. Results suggest that teachers who take part in curriculum-focused TPD are more likely to report using a variety of the instructional methods considered in this study. Furthermore, TPD delivered with greater levels of teacher collaboration, active learning and longer duration also increases, in many countries and economies, the likelihood of teachers reporting using a large number of these strategies. In contrast, teachers’ exposure to TPD involving other teachers from the school (i.e. with collective participation) seems to be specifically detrimental for active teaching methods. The paper discusses the prevalence of these features, national gaps in their exposure and policy implications derived from these findings.