Non-Participation of Mathematics Teachers in Professional Development: A Cross-National Analysis of TIMSS 2011, 2015 and 2019

Teacher professional development (PD) programs ensure quality education, and quality education is the basis for sustainable development. However, the non-participation of mathematics teachers in PD still represents a tough challenge for several school systems and remains poorly understood. Using data from the 2011, 2015, and 2019 cycles of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), we analyzed more than 200 national datasets to identify countries with relevant proportions of non-participation in PD and model cross-nationally the relationship between the odds of this outcome and a set of variables at the teacher and school level, including the interaction between job satisfaction and the attributes of the schools. Successive logistic regression models applied to each national dataset reveals that, in different countries, the teachers’ job satisfaction, sex, teaching experience, the completion of initial teaching training, and the schools’ attributes (i.e., location and socio-economic status (SES)) were significantly associated with the odds of non-participation in PD amongst mathematics teachers. Three cases (Lebanon and Japan in 2015, and Norway in 2019) describes opposite patterns of results for the interaction between the teachers’ job satisfaction and the type of school location (urban vs. remote rural). In Lebanon in 2019, female teachers, as well as more experienced teachers and those teachers working in deprived areas were significantly more likely to report non-participation in PD. This study underscores the importance of undertaking regular and reliable cross-national monitoring of teachers’ non-participation in PD to guide policy efforts aligned with indicator 4.c.7 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals framework.