Who Participates in Content-Focused Teacher Professional Development? Evidence From a Large Scale Study

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.

Factors influencing mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge: A systematic review

“…The results of the study detailing professional development showed a good effect on PCK. For instance, professional development programs (Ekmekci et al, 2019;Hidayat & Setyawan, 2020;Maboya et al, 2022;Sarkim, 2020), content-focused professional development (Richter et al, 2021), model/ professional training/ teacher training/ collaboration programs (Gambini & Lenart, 2021;Jeschke et al, 2021;Kurt-Birel et al, 2020;Manderfeld & Siller, 2019;Saputra et al, 2019;Sunzuma & Maharaj, 2019;Tang, 2018;Yildiz & Akyuz, 2019;Yilmaz & Demir, 2021), seminar/ workshops/ in-service training (Ansah et al, 2020;Chang et al, 2020;Kurt-Birel et al, 2020;Moh' d et al, 2021), educational course/ pedagogy course (Lau, 2019;Lee et al, 2018), school based continuous professional development/ on-site professional training (lesson study) (Helmbold et al, 2021;Mhakure, 2019), structured interventions/ professional learning workshops (Hilton & Hilton, 2018), regular meetings (Taylan et al, 2022), microteaching course/ microteaching/ teaching practicums (Setyaningrum et al, 2018) and a two-week summer institute (Schoen et al, 2019) were implemented to enhance mathematics teachers' PCK level effectively. Notably, terms such as model, professional training, teacher training and collaboration program were frequently used to represent professional development in most of the studies.…”

Will, skills, or conscientiousness: What predicts teachers’ intentions to participate in technology-related professional development?

“…In educational systems where teachers can choose to participate in PD (e.g., in Germany) and PD is not mandatory due to external circumstances (e.g., distance learning during COVID-19-related school closures), there is evidence of a catalytic rather than an educative function of PD (D. Richter, Kunter, Klusmann, Lüdtke, & Baumert, 2011, Richter, Engelbert, Weirich, & Anand Pant, 2013E. Richter, Kunter, Marx, & Richter, 2021).…”

Subjektive Fortbildungsbedarfe von Lehrkräften an Schulen in herausfordernden Lagen

“…In Bezug auf die Berufserfahrung zeigen Studien einheitlich, dass Lehrkräfte mit mehr Berufserfahrung zum einen weniger Bereitschaft äußern, an Fortbildungen teilzunehmen (Hauk et al 2022), und zum anderen auch mit weniger Wahrscheinlichkeit an Fortbildungsangeboten teilnehmen (E. . Befunde zu geschlechtsspezifischen Unterschieden sind hingegen uneinheitlich (E. Richter et al , 2021. Männer scheinen nach Krille (2020) öfter an Veranstaltungen im Bereich des Einsatzes Digitaler Medien teilzunehmen.…”