Quality Assurance in Teacher Education and Outcomes: A Study of 17 Countries

This study investigated the relationship between policies related to the recruitment, selection, preparation, and certification of new teachers and (a) the quality of future teachers as measured by their mathematics content and pedagogy content knowledge and (b) student achievement in mathematics at the national level. The study used data collected for the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics, which compared the ways in which 17 countries prepared teachers of mathematics for the primary and secondary levels. A consistent positive association was found between the strength of a country's quality assurance arrangements and future teachers' knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy. Countries with strong policies for assuring the quality of new teachers were also found to be among the strongest performers on international tests of mathematics achievement.