Supports and Barriers to Teacher Professional Development: Analysis of TALIS 2018

• In Event: Educational Policy, Social Change and Equity

Proposal

Background
Designing effective teacher professional development (PD) activities is important to respond to the rapidly changing and increasingly complex demands on teachers (Collinson et al., 2009). As such, governments around the globe make substantial monetary investments in teacher PD and teachers spend a considerable amount of time on their professional growth (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014). To ensure that such extensive (inter)national investment in teacher PD and teachers’ own time and efforts invested in PD are most effective, several aspects of PD design are important to consider. Our study focuses on a specific set of PD design attributes, namely the support teachers receive and barriers they face in terms of time, material, monetary compensation, or reward. Understanding the supports and barriers for PD participation can provide insights into the levers policymakers can pull to increase teacher PD participation and help teachers actively engage with the materials learned in PD activities.

Literature Review
A large body of research on teacher PD explores the factors that make a PD activity effective. A group of studies focuses on the content and focus of the program, such as subject-based knowledge or instructional practices (van Driel & Berry, 2012). Another group of studies discusses the delivery of the program including mode (school-based, teacher collaborations, coaching, etc.) and length (Darling-Hammond, 2017; Hill & Papay, 2022). Lastly, there are a few studies that look into teacher and school contexts that may influence the PD experience of teachers. Teacher perceptions and values are found to be particularly important when teachers decide whether to participate in PD (Opfer, 2016). While these are important areas that shape the PD experience of teachers, what is less reflected in the literature is the feasibility aspect. Considering the relationships between various forms of supports and barriers teachers experience and their PD participation is important as these results may provide meaningful insights into designing more effective PD activities. To fill this gap in the literature, we ask the following research questions:

1. What is the relationship between teacher perceived sense of support for PD and teacher PD participation?
2. What is the relationship between teacher perceived sense of barrier for PD and teacher PD participation?
3. What is the relationship between teacher perceived sense of support for PD and how teachers find PD impactful?
4. What is the relationship between teacher perceived sense of barrier for PD and how teachers find PD impactful?

Methods
We use lower secondary education data from TALIS 2018 (Teaching and Learning International Survey) collected across more than 45 education systems by the OECD. We focus on the survey items that ask teachers about their experience with PD. We first conduct a descriptive analysis of the key outcomes (PD participation-overall, PD participation-school, PD participation-outside school, and PD impact) and independent variables (PD supports and PD barriers). Next, we use the Ordinary Least Squares approach to understand how PD supports and barriers can explain PD participation and the Linear Probability Model to understand how PD supports and barriers are associated with how much teachers find PD impactful.
As teacher PD policy of each educational system may alter the PD participation of teachers and how they make use of the PD they attended, we classified educational systems based on whether PD is a requirement, devolved to school-level decision, or voluntary in each educational system.

Finding
Our regression analysis finds that greater PD support is statistically significantly associated with higher PD participation. This result is consistent across educational systems that have different PD policies and for PD activities that are and are not based in schools. Teachers who reported that they received more support also found the PD activity more impactful.
PD barrier is also associated with lower PD participation and whether teachers find the PD program impactful. We find this association between PD barrier and PD participation mainly among systems where PD is not a national requirement but instead decided by the local agency or by individual teachers. Also, the result suggests that the role of monetary barriers is less consistent across systems than non-monetary barriers to explain whether teachers find PD activities impactful.

Significance
Teacher professional development is an important policy arena where a sizable governmental expenditure goes to support teachers (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014). Despite recognition of the importance of PD, few studies have directly examined what motivates and demotivates teachers in participating in PD activities. Our findings based on recent data from over 45 education systems indicate that PD supports are positively associated with the two outcomes and that PD barriers have negative correlations with the two outcomes. This denotes that improving institutional support and reducing barriers may enhance PD participation and the application of knowledge gained in PD. Notably, the results suggest that non-monetary support and barrier may change PD participation and how teachers apply the knowledge gained to their own classrooms. These considerations of what matters for teachers to participate in PD and gain benefits from it will give insights into designing and implementing more successful PD.

Authors

• Amita Chudgar, Michigan State University

• Su Yon Choi, Michigan State University

• Aliya Bizhanova, Michigan State University