Does Teacher Training Make Teachers More Effective? Evidence from TIMSS.

Abstract: Several countries have recently increased their efforts to improve teaching quality by focusing their attention on pre- and in-service teacher training. This raises the question whether such training makes teachers actually more effective. Yet, the existing literature on teacher training is limited and inconclusive. Using cross-sectional data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), we follow a within-student fixed effects approach and show that in-service teacher training does significantly benefit student achievements. More specifically, teachers’ participation in professional development increases students’ standardized test scores by 0.031-0.040 of a standard deviation. Moreover, we identify a dose response pattern suggesting that increasing participation hours in such programs are associated with rising teacher effectiveness. In contrast, we do not find any evidence that pre-service teacher training has a significant impact on student performance.