The research in 60 seconds

This study compared TALIS data from lower-secondary teachers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 2018 and 2024. It looked at changes in professional development, teaching practices, work-related stress and job satisfaction before and after the pandemic.

The countries followed strikingly different paths. Norway recorded the largest growth in professional development, including a 45.3% increase in participation in development related to inclusive classroom practices. Yet it also saw the biggest rise in work-related stress, at 9.8%, and the largest fall in job satisfaction, at 4.3%. Denmark moved in the opposite direction: overall participation fell slightly, while work-related stress fell by 7.9% and job satisfaction rose by 1.7%.

Across all four countries, professional development relating to inclusive practice increased, while classroom management became more prominent in reported teaching practice.

So what?

The tempting conclusion would be that some forms of professional development work and others do not. The research cannot tell us that.

This is a comparison of national teacher samples at two points in time, not a longitudinal study following the same teachers or an experiment testing the effects of professional development. It cannot show that professional learning caused changes in stress or satisfaction, or that pandemic recovery itself caused the differences between countries. National averages may also hide substantial variation between schools.

What it does give us is a useful challenge to a familiar assumption: providing more professional development is not the same thing as providing more support.

Norway is the clearest example. Between 2018 and 2024, teachers reported substantially more professional development, particularly around inclusion, but at the same time reported greater stress and lower satisfaction with the profession. Denmark combined a small reduction in participation with lower stress and slightly higher job satisfaction. The authors read these contrasting patterns through a Job Demands-Resources framework: what may matter is not simply how many resources teachers receive, but how those resources sit alongside workload and other demands.

That distinction matters in schools. Professional learning can itself require time, preparation, implementation and follow-up. A new training programme may be valuable, but if it arrives on top of unchanged responsibilities, its practical effect can be very different from professional learning accompanied by protected time, fewer competing priorities or additional classroom support.

There is another pattern worth noticing. Reported classroom-management practices increased in all four countries, by 10.5% in Norway, 11.4% in Finland and 12.4% in Sweden, while cognitive activation was much more stable and declined slightly in Finland and Sweden. The researchers suggest this may reflect teachers responding to immediate classroom pressures before being able to focus on more cognitively demanding teaching. TALIS does not measure whether student behaviour actually worsened, so this is a prompt for investigation rather than a diagnosis.

The practical question is therefore not simply, what professional development should we provide? It is also, what are we making possible for teachers to do with it?

What should teachers do with this?

  • Treat new professional learning as a workload decision, not just a learning opportunity. When you are asked to adopt a new approach, identify what it requires in planning, classroom routines and follow-up. If something genuinely new is being added, make the extra demand visible rather than assuming it will fit.
  • Notice where classroom management is crowding out deeper learning. Choose one class or unit and look for moments where keeping order takes disproportionate attention. Then ask whether one routine, scaffold or support could free more space for questioning, explanation or problem-solving.
  • Bring implementation problems back into professional learning. Move beyond "was this useful?" and ask what made it difficult to use, what it replaced, and what support would make it sustainable.

What should school leaders do with this?

  • Pair every major initiative with a demand check. Before launching something new, ask what extra work it creates and what can be reduced, delayed or simplified.
  • Track workload and professional learning together. Do not evaluate CPD only through attendance or satisfaction. Look at workload, implementation capacity and whether teachers have the conditions to apply what they have learned.
  • Investigate increases in classroom-management effort. If staff spend more energy on behaviour and routines, consider staffing, student support, timetabling and curriculum demands too, not only teacher development.

The goal is not to avoid professional development. It is to make sure that learning meant to support teachers does not become one more pressure they have to absorb.