In this report, we provide a review of research on the effects of teachers’ professional development (PD) on teaching and student learning, and evaluate some PD models and their potential application in national PD in Sweden.
The report’s conclusions and recommendations can be summarized as follows:
1. There is strong evidence that high-quality PD can improve teaching and student learning, while the PD that teachers typically participate in is unlikely to lead to such effects.
2. PD that improves student learning is very likely to be economically beneficial for society.
3. We present three main recommendations, regardless of which model for teacher PD that is chosen:
a. Teachers should receive support through several mechanisms because this increases the likelihood that they will qualitatively and sustainably apply newly acquired knowledge to their teaching.
b. The model should consist of parts with relatively short duration because PD programs do not need to have long duration to produce effects on teaching and student learning, and shorter interventions use teachers’ time and school resources more sparingly.
c. The model should recommend ways of teaching that are well-supported by reliable research on which ways of teaching improve student learning (considering factors such as subject, grade level, and context), as it is otherwise unlikely that student learning will improve.
4. To increase the likelihood that national PD improves teaching and student learning, the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) should:
a. Develop structures to assess the research support for the content of PD, for example, which ways of teaching benefit student learning, taking into account factors such as subject, grade level, and context.
b. Use impact evaluation within the framework of pilot programs before scaling up initiatives nationally, as well as evaluate the effects of scaled-up initiatives.