How to Improve Student Performance? A look inside the box of teachers' education

Abstract: Improving the quality of education is imperative for economic development, and educating teachers has been seen as one of the main ways to increase educational quality. Yet, there is conflicting evidence about the importance or effectiveness of teacher’s education to improve student outcomes. This text makes use of the TALIS-PISA link from the OECD to disaggregate teachers’ education into the different elements included in it and to test the relationship between those different elements and student performance. Results show that general pedagogy has a positive association with academic achievement, and so does subject content to a lower extent. Yet the relationship is negative for elements such as training in how to teach cross-curricular skills or how to use ICT for teaching. Classroom practice during teachers’ studies is also negatively associated with student outcomes. Other elements do not seem to have consistent statistically significant relationships across subjects. The results from this study may help motivate further research into the specific training that teachers must receive to become better educators and contribute to improve educational outcomes and economic development.