Investigating the relationship between educational inequity and teacher participation in professional development: A cross-national and quasi-experimental approach using TIMSS

The relationship between improving teaching through professional development (PD) and promoting educational equality remains under-researched. This study addresses this gap using a cross-national and quasi-experimental approach. We examine disparities in teachers’ participation in subject-specific PD across student socioeconomic groups and estimate the effects of PD participation on student achievement. Our analysis draws on data from 16 education systems participating in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 2003 and 2019, focusing on mathematics and science. To account for unobserved student characteristics and school quality, we employ a within-student, between-subjects design. In most cases, we find that teacher PD participation has statistically insignificant effects on student achievement, regardless of student socioeconomic status or teacher qualification levels. In some instances, PD is associated with small negative effects for students from higher SES backgrounds. Exceptions include Australia, Ontario (Canada), South Korea, and Singapore, where specific forms of PD (content and pedagogy) are linked to modest improvements in achievement among low-SES students. However, these benefits are not consistent across PD measures. Overall, the findings suggest that in most countries, teacher PD is not currently being leveraged to reduce socioeconomic achievement gaps, and that PD forms interact with the student socioeconomic profile in heterogenous and unexpected ways.