Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between teacher quality and teachers’ engagement in professional development (PD) activities using data on 229 German secondary school mathematics teachers. We assessed different aspects of teacher quality (e.g. professional knowledge, instructional quality) using a variety of measures, including standardised tests of teachers’ content knowledge, to determine what characteristics are associated with high participation in PD. The results show that teachers with higher scores for teacher quality variables take part in more content-focused PD than teachers with lower scores for these variables. This suggests that teacher learning may be subject to a Matthew effect, whereby more proficient teachers benefit more from PD than less proficient teachers.
Highlights
Teacher quality is of paramount importance for student outcomes, as a wealth of recent research has shown
We found significant correlations between the time invested in subject-focused professional development (PD) and the following teacher characteristics: content knowledge (r 0.26), pedagogical content knowledge (r 0.18), constructivist orientation (r 0.22), motivation for mathematics (r 0.26), and occupational engagement (r 0.16)
We concentrate on this distinction because many different studies—including correlational studies, quasi-experimental studies, longitudinal studies, and meta-analyses—demonstrate that PD activities that focus on subject-specific content, as opposed to very generic PD activities, contribute to PD effectiveness and support teacher learning (e.g., DarlingHammond et al, 2017)
Summary
Teacher quality is of paramount importance for student outcomes, as a wealth of recent research has shown. Teachers are free to decide which and how many of the available PD programmes they want to attend (Eurydice, 2008) In this self-directed learning context, teachers themselves become key actors in efforts to improve the quality of teachers and teaching (Kwakman, 2003; van Eekelen et al, 2006). This raises the crucial question of why teachers take advantage of some types of PD and not others, and how teachers’ attendance of PD programmes correlates with aspects of teacher quality. Teacher characteristics PCK CK Constructivist orientation Enthusiasm for mathematics Occupational engagement
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