How Other Countries Train Teachers: Professional Learning

This 2020 article by Kristi Meeuwse and Diane Mason compares how high-achieving nations support teacher professional learning with practice in the United States. A new section below, written in 2026, sets their ideas beside the research on effective professional development and points to current international data.

Focus on professional learning to meet student needs

by Kristi Meeuwse and Diane Mason

The Future Is Now

As students face growing needs to function competently in a global society, a greater focus must be placed on educator professional learning to meet these needs. Teachers’ skillsets should include the ability to develop students’ attitudes involving cultural diversity, facilitate the capacity for understanding global events and the impact of these events on a local level, and provide opportunities to develop communication skills, as well as critical thinking and analytical skills. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted increasing demands in the global workplace require specialization of skills and knowledge.

With ever-changing communication streams and workflows, complacency is not a luxury our teachers and students can afford. How are educators fostering global citizenship and competency? In other high-achieving nations, educational systems are being revised to strengthen pedagogical practices, and modify classroom practices to encourage innovation and build capacity. The United States must incorporate meaningful technology and creative learning spaces to stay competitive in a global education market. Global competency does not require a separate curriculum. By infusing global content within required subject areas, students have authentic opportunities to examine and solve real-world problems.

Successful Practices In High Achieving Nations

Teacher Quality

Globally, high-achieving nations have prioritized professional learning and have placed a great emphasis on teacher quality, including pre-service learning. With recruitment of only top students, strict entry requirements, and rigorous training programs, countries such as Finland, Japan, Russia, Korea, Singapore, and Turkey demonstrate a correlation between student scores and rigorous entry requirements. Further, teachers in these countries conduct action research, engage in regular reflection and evaluative exercises. These processes are instituted in teacher education programs and continued as employment expectations in schools.

Professional Learning Opportunities

Teachers in high-achieving nations are provided release time to enact action-research studies and evaluate teaching practices. With extended collaborative activities and job-embedded professional learning, teachers can focus on those instructional practices that were successful in raising student achievement. Additionally, teachers are engaged in professional learning activities during the school day on average, 20 hours per week. Over a course of six to 12 months, gains were noted in student achievement. Embedding professional learning during the school day gives teachers collaborative planning time and opportunities to reflect upon what works in schools.

Communities of Practice

Despite global successes integrating professional learning communities (PLC’S) and providing educators opportunities to make decisions regarding professional learning, the United States provides few opportunities for teachers to have a voice in professional learning. Further, teachers in the US work directly with students 80% of their working day, while European and Asian countries spend approximately 60% of their working day with students. The remainder of their day is spent in collaborative planning activities. With less time to plan collaboratively, teachers in the US have fewer opportunities to build capacity and participate in professional learning communities.

Research shows teacher motivation is increased when collaborative approaches are used and are incorporated into the work day. In addition, when educators are provided opportunities to participate in global professional learning networks, they are exposed to a large array of learning opportunities in the world of education.

United States

Achievement Gaps

While the United States has implemented initiatives to increase teacher quality and reform educational practices, disparity remains. Rural schools lack sufficient resources and outdated technology infrastructure suitable for 21st-century learning. Inner city schools face similar issues as well as poverty, violence, poor attendance and lack of parental support. Teachers in these areas lack exposure to innovative instructional practices and lack capacity to implement them. Yet, wealthier districts have access to more resources, newer technologies, community partnerships, and as a result, perform as well as international peers. By not adequately addressing these achievement gaps, they become cyclical in nature and perpetuate wider gaps.

In addition to gaps in student achievement, the United States lags behind other high-achieving nations in mathematics, science, and technology. Schools throughout the country are grappling with teacher shortages in these areas. Many districts find there are not enough qualified applicants to meet the demands. This forces increased class sizes, which decreases the amount a student may learn. Individuals highly qualified in STEM content areas often find jobs in the private sector that pay more.

Also, states are placing greater focus on literacy to raise achievement in reading on standardized tests. Professional learning resources are being directed toward increased training in pedagogical practices in literacy. As a result, fewer resources are being directed toward science, math, and technology.

In contrast, European countries place a greater focus on STEM subjects and provide substitute teachers so professional learning occurs during the workday. However, European countries do not fully fund professional learning. Instead, teachers pay for the specific courses or sessions while their employees fund a substitute. This commitment from both parties enables teachers to engage in professional learning experiences that align with their interests and needs during a mutually desirable time.

Moving Forward

Today’s young students face a future completely different from the past due to a highly connected world. With the present interconnectivity of information, resources and people, knowledge expands exponentially every day. Consequently, it is vital that educational leaders provide a clear, focused vision to improve student achievement in an interconnected environment conducive to using technology resources to support instruction. However, many systems worldwide still function in old paradigms, which often stifle effective instructional practices designed to bridge student needs with opportunities for engagement in an interconnected manner to improve achievement.

Creating a learning organization requires external and internal accountability. It is critical for leaders to build capacity and shift pedagogical practices to target improved student achievement. To do so, internal capacity building is key. Districts with high expectations, a focus on continuous learning, and ongoing feedback are more likely to show improved achievement.

One way to move forward toward creating a learning organization is to place priorities on developing and implementing continuous personalized professional development with ongoing feedback. Governments, Ministries and Departments of Education should provide the enabling conditions by instituting professional learning standards and frameworks, developing and implementing policies for funding flexibility and support for teacher personalized learning, and establishing guidelines that help ensure educator success at the beginning of their careers. Furthermore, professional learning should equip teachers to work in the political, economic, and social context in which they are expected to teach, while keeping an eye on teacher perceptions, knowledge, and instructional needs.

How other countries train teachers, and what the research says schools can use

Readers who ask how other countries train teachers usually want to know two things: what do high-achieving systems do differently, and which of it can a school in the United States actually copy? Kristi Meeuwse and Diane Mason answered the first question in 2020 by pointing to selective entry into teaching, time inside the school day for professional learning, and teacher collaboration. This section sets those ideas beside research on what makes professional learning work, and says plainly where the evidence in the original is thin.

A research standard to measure any country against

The most useful single reference for a school leader is the Learning Policy Institute’s 2017 review, Effective Teacher Professional Development, by Linda Darling-Hammond, Maria Hyler and Madelyn Gardner. The authors reviewed 35 methodologically rigorous studies that linked teacher professional development to changes in teaching and in student outcomes, and they found seven features that the effective programs shared. The programs were content focused, meaning they centered on teaching strategies tied to a subject such as math, science or literacy. They used active learning, in which teachers design and try out strategies themselves. They gave teachers room to collaborate, often in their own workplace. They showed models of effective practice, such as lesson plans, sample student work, peer observation or video. They offered coaching and expert support, built in time for feedback and reflection, and lasted long enough for teachers to learn, practice, implement and reflect.

Two limits are worth stating. The review drew on studies that demonstrated a positive link between professional development, teaching practices and student outcomes, so it describes what worked and not how often professional development fails. The fact sheet also notes that earlier research found many professional development initiatives appear ineffective, and it gives no minimum number of hours, saying only that effective programs allow adequate time to learn, practice, implement and reflect. A district should therefore treat the seven features as a checklist for planning, not as a guarantee.

How the original article’s claims fit the research

As Meeuwse and Mason explain above, teachers in high-achieving nations are given release time to carry out action research, take part in extended collaborative work and learn on the job. Several of those practices line up with the Learning Policy Institute’s findings on collaboration, feedback and reflection, and sustained learning. The original also reports that teachers in the United States spend about 80 percent of the working day with students, against about 60 percent in some European and Asian countries, and that European teachers often pay for a course while their employer pays for a substitute. These comparisons come from the authors and their sources, and this update has not independently confirmed the percentages or the funding arrangements. A reader planning a policy change should check them against the original international surveys before quoting them.

It is also worth being careful about the link between selective teacher entry and student scores. The original describes a correlation across countries such as Finland, Japan, Korea and Singapore. A correlation across a handful of systems cannot show that strict entry requirements cause higher scores, because these systems also differ in pay, status, curriculum and culture.

Where to find current international data

The OECD runs the Teaching and Learning International Survey, known as TALIS, which collects internationally comparable data on the learning environments of schools and the working conditions of teachers and principals. A 2024 round has produced national reports, and the Australian Council for Educational Research published its TALIS 2024 Australian Report in 2025, with sections on developing teacher expertise, professional relationships in schools, teacher leadership and autonomy, and the demands of teaching. The listing page gives no figures, so a reader who wants numbers should open the full OECD and country reports. Because TALIS reports data country by country, it is the better place to check the working-time and professional-learning comparisons that the original makes.

What a school or district can do without changing national policy

Most of what the research supports sits within a principal’s or district leader’s control. A first step is to look at the current professional learning calendar and ask how many sessions are one-time events and how many continue over a semester or a year, with a coach or colleague returning to the same practice. A second step is to protect a regular block of collaborative planning time during the school day, since teachers elsewhere have more of it, and to use it for looking at student work together. A third is to let teachers help choose the focus, because the original notes that teachers in the United States have little say in their own professional learning, and the Learning Policy Institute’s active-learning feature depends on teachers trying strategies in their own classrooms.

Smaller districts can start with a single content area, as the content-focused feature suggests, instead of spreading time across many topics. If substitutes are costly, a shared funding arrangement of the kind the original describes in Europe, with the teacher giving some time and the school providing cover, is one option to discuss with staff and the board. For more on designing this kind of work, see edCircuit’s professional development guide, and the earlier articles What is Personalized Professional Learning? and The Role of Coaching and Reflection.

The central point of the 2020 article still holds: professional learning that is sustained, collaborative and part of the teacher’s working day is what high-achieving systems have in common with the research. The practical work for a school is to find where its own schedule and funding make that possible.

Focus on professional learning to meet student needs