Exploring Differential Opportunities for Improving Teachers' Instructional Practice Across Countries: The Roll of Access to Professional Development

• In Event: 52.020 - Proceeding Toward Justice: Understanding Aspects of Educational Equity Through International Comparative Research

Abstract

The importance of teachers is now well documented and accepted. Yet many countries have difficulty in recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. This problem is compounded in schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged students that more likely to suffer staffing shortages (Ingvarson and Rowe, 2007) and often employ less experienced and less qualified teachers (OECD, 2005). The higher concentration of under-qualified or novice teachers in some countries and in some schools requires provision of professional development to ensure that less qualified teachers acquire the skills and knowledge that would enable them to be effective teachers thus attenuating the differential in initial teacher qualification.
The purpose of this paper is to use data from OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013 to explore differences in access to professional development within and between countries with a particular emphasis on understanding whether or not professional development is being used as a mechanism to alleviate differences in quality of teachers. The analysis of the data uses multi-level modeling to consider differences in access to professional development by teachers, the types of professional development undertaken, reported impact of professional development on instructional practice, and the presence of mediators such as instructionally focused feedback to teachers.
While almost 90% of teachers responding to TALIS 2013 reported participating in some form of professional development over the preceding 12 month period, there is considerable variation in the types and intensity of professional development undertaken both across and within countries. Teacher participation in effective professional development (as defined in the literature, see for example Desimone, 2009) is significantly lower than participation in less effective forms of professional development. Those who participate in more effective forms of professional development report higher levels of impact on instructional practice whereas those participating in less effective practice report significantly lower levels of impact. Feedback to teachers that is instructionally focused also varies widely across and within countries but where it occurs, it has a positive relationship to both higher participation in more effective professional development and higher reported impact on instruction. However, those teachers who may be considered least in need of improvement (teachers with higher qualifications, in less disadvantaged schools, or in countries with higher student outcomes) are the most likely to receive both effective professional development and instructionally focused feedback while those in most need often report less of both. Thus, while TALIS 2013 provides some evidence that when teachers receive instructionally focused feedback and have opportunities to participate in effective forms of professional development, there are positive impacts on instructional practice reported; equity in teacher quality is not being enhanced within and between many countries.

Author

• V. Darleen Opfer, RAND Education