Teachers’ professional development and an open classroom climate: A comparative study of Norway, Sweden, South Korea, and Taiwan

Abstract

This article examines teachers’ professional development (PD) in terms of content knowledge and teaching methods, their sense of preparedness in teaching, and their teaching practice of civic and citizenship education (CCE) in lower secondary schools in Norway, Sweden, South Korea, and Taiwan, and how these variables influence students’ experience of classroom climate. We use data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2016) initiated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). ICCS 2016 data from these four places contain responses from teachers (N=7,159), and students (N=16, 089; average age =14.4 years) from 558 schools. We find that the more PD training on CCE topics and teaching methods teachers receive, the higher their sense of preparedness in teaching CCE in all four education systems. We also find that students of different cultures have different experiences about open classroom climates despite that teacher’s in the four places have utilized the same teaching approaches.