In the intermediaries’ survey, the majority of responding ITEs said that they believe graduating teacher candidates’ research engagement skills are insufficiently developed. This is a concerning finding. For instance, only 35% of ITEs agreed or strongly agreed that, when confronted with a new problem or decision, graduating teacher candidates will look for research that might be relevant. And only 28% think that graduating teacher candidates are able to judge the quality of education research with confidence (see Figure 2). It is debatable if every new teacher should be able to conduct academic research. However, it is crucial that each teacher has sufficiently developed skills and attitudes allowing them to thoughtfully question their own practice, find and understand relevant research findings, distinguish scientific evidence from other sources of information, and can integrate insights from research evidence into their daily practice. There are three reasons that might explain these figures.
How can research and initial teacher education institutions support research use?
For most ITEs, developing teacher candidates’ research engagement skills is not a key activity
In the intermediaries’ survey, only 48% of ITEs reported that they frequently or systematically support educational practitioners to develop research skills (see Figure 2). Even fewer ITEs (33%) said that they provide training for school leaders. This may be because developing research engagement skills is not a formal requirement in the national standards for ITE in most OECD systems. In 12 out of 36 OECD and partner countries with available data, HEIs are entirely free to decide whether and how to include the development of research skills in their ITE curricula (OECD, 2022[7]).
Even in cases where research engagement skills development is integrated in ITE curricula, this is often done through a separate project or module. For example, teacher candidates may be required to submit a research paper to graduate, but educational research may not be systematically integrated across all modules of the ITE curriculum. This entails the risk that “student-teachers and teacher educators view research competence as an ‘add on’ rather than a crucial foundation of teacher education and the teaching profession in general” (OECD, 2023, p. 9[8]). In some jurisdictions, however, national standards for ITE do include the development of research engagement skills as an explicit requirement, and external quality assurance mechanisms exist to check that HEIs follow these standards (see Box 3).
Notes: This figure shows the percentage of ITEs agreeing or strongly agreeing with statements related to the research engagement skills of graduating teacher candidates. Statements are grouped based on the dimensions of research engagement skills: Literacy, Use and Production.
Source: OECD Survey of Knowledge mobilisation in Education data, in OECD (2025[2]), Everybody Cares About Using Education Research Sometimes: Perspectives of Knowledge Intermediaries, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5ef88972-en.
Many ITEs face challenges to keep up with and integrate the latest developments in education research into their curricula
Integrating scientific research into teacher education curricula is especially challenging for higher education systems where governments impose strict requirements on the content, subjects or competencies to be taught. These requirements can hinder the capacity of ITEs to regularly update and align their curricula with the latest developments in scientific research (Révai, 2018[9]; OECD, 2025[10]). As an alternative, some countries make professional bodies responsible for setting and maintaining quality standards, as these organisations are often more closely connected, and responsive, to changing industry requirements and developments in research. Typically, such bodies will include representatives from industry and academia. This flexibility is crucial for programmes that prepare students for employment in specific sectors or jobs (including the teaching profession), where required knowledge and skills can evolve rapidly.
Internationally, this self-regulated approach is quite well-established in sectors such as medicine or business, where there are even global professional networks that drive national quality standards (e.g. the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) or the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)). For the teaching profession, there are some examples where professional teaching bodies set and maintain national quality standards for teaching. In Ireland, for example, the Teaching Council is responsible for regulating the teaching profession. More than half of the Council consists of representatives from the primary and secondary school sectors (see Box 3). Education International and UNESCO have also collaborated to develop a “Global Framework for Professional Teaching Standards” (Education International, 2019[11]), representing more than 33 million teachers worldwide.
The structure of ITE curricula can also pose challenges to connect teacher education with the latest developments and challenges in practice. In many ITE programmes, there is no connection between the pedagogical and subject-specific training teacher candidates receive, and their practical training in the classroom. This is especially a challenge in consecutive teacher training programmes, where practical training follows a period of more theoretical training (OECD, 2019[12]). For this reason, some systems have supported the development of concurrent ITE programmes and research-practice partnerships, in which education practitioners and ITE providers work closely together to design, deliver and update the ITE curriculum (see Box 3).
In many ITE institutions, teacher educators have insufficient opportunities to develop their own research engagement skills
Teacher educators also need opportunities to actively engage with and align their teaching practices with the latest developments in scientific research and update the subjects they teach accordingly. However, for many teacher educators, research engagement is not part of their responsibilities or included in performance assessment (OECD, 2024[13]). In the intermediaries’ survey, only 60% of ITEs agreed or strongly agreed that their institution has formal processes in place to encourage staff to engage critically with different information sources (e.g. scientific articles, policy or guidance documents from official bodies, or information gathered from professional development activities or conferences).
Finally, continuing professional learning (CPL) among teaching staff in higher education – and this includes teacher educators – is only slowly starting to become a part of HEIs’ culture (OECD, 2024[13]; OECD, 2025[14]). Evidence from a 2024 survey conducted by the European Universities Association (EUA), which collected responses from 163 HEIs, found that 70% of HEIs now have a learning and teaching centre operating at central/institutional level that offers CPL to teaching staff. Compared with 2018, this represents a steep increase, when only 47% of surveyed institutions said they had such a centre (Zhang, 2025[15]).
In some leading OECD systems, governments, research and initial teacher education institutions have adopted different approaches to address some of the challenges outlined above and strengthen the research dimension in ITE programmes. Box 3 presents a selection of country examples intended as inspiration for governments and initial teacher education institutions.
Integrating research engagement skills in national standards for teacher education (Australia and Ireland)
In Australia, the professional standards for teachers include an explicit requirement for ITEs to develop teacher candidates’ research engagement skills (AITSL, 2018[16]). Similarly, in Ireland all ITE providers must apply for accreditation with the Teaching Council and meet seven standards. One of these is “Creativity and Reflective Practice” and seeks to ensure that ITEs focus on developing “a creative mindset among student-teachers, teachers as reflective practitioners, teachers as innovators, teachers as researchers” (Teaching Council Ireland, 2020, p. 14[17]).
Strengthening the theory-practice link through concurrent teacher training (Tartu University, Estonia)
In Estonia, the University of Tartu carried out a major revision of its teacher education programme in 2012/13 following an external evaluation by the Estonian Quality Agency for Education (HAKA). A key objective of the revision focused on strengthening the link between education theory and practice. To achieve this, two key changes introduced by the university were to embed continuous teaching practicum throughout the two-year master’s programme, and to more closely involve teachers, school leaders and teacher candidates in research projects (Révai, 2018[9]).
Fostering research-based collaboration between ITEs and schools (Sweden)
In Sweden, the government launched a major national pilot in 2017 (involving 25 HEIs) to develop and test sustainable collaboration models between academia and the school system in the areas of research, teacher education and school activities. In January 2025, the project (ULF: Education, Learning, Research) transitioned into a permanent operation. It is now co-ordinated by four universities, with each university working in a “node”, fostering collaboration with HEIs and schools in its region to support collaboration between schools and academia (Government of Sweden, 2025[18]).
Creating professional development opportunities for teacher educators (Finland)
Finland’s Teacher Education Forum was established in 2016 by the Ministry of Education and supports research-based collaboration between teacher educators, researchers and school educators through literature reviews, peer learning and benchmarking. The Forum has developed national guidelines and priorities for the further development of teacher education in Finland in 2022-26. Research skills and critical thinking are mentioned as core competencies for the network to focus on in the coming years (Finnish Teacher Education Forum, 2022[19]).