This chapter investigates whether certain types of teachers are more likely to be highly knowledgeable about general pedagogy. It analyses the relationships between general pedagogical knowledge and teachers’ characteristics, such as gender, age, teaching experience and subject area. It also examines whether teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge is associated with their self-efficacy and perceptions of their own preparedness for teaching.
Results from the Teacher Knowledge Survey
What Teachers Know About General Pedagogy
Abstract
Experienced teachers outperform novice teachers in Portugal (by 12 points) and the United States (by 31 points), but novice teachers tend to have higher GPK scores in Saudi Arabia (by 7 points) and South Africa (by 9 points).
Female teachers tend to have higher GPK than their male colleagues. Gender differences are statistically significant in five of the eight countries studied. Women’s outperformance of men is most marked in Croatia (15 points) and Saudi Arabia (14 points).
Higher GPK is related to less self-efficacy in specific areas of teaching like student engagement and reducing achievement gaps. This may be due to higher performance standards arising from having higher GPK. However, teachers' GPK is not related to their overall self-efficacy in most countries.
In most countries, teachers' GPK is not associated with their views of whether their professional opportunities to learn (OTL) prepared them for different aspects of teaching. However, more knowledgeable teachers in Saudi Arabia are consistently more likely to report that their OTL prepared them “quite a bit” or “a lot”, across many topics.
Teachers tend to feel less prepared by their opportunities to learn about classroom management and supporting diverse learners than they do regarding designing lessons or different assessment purposes, even when their GPK is in the top quarter of the national distribution of scores. This suggests that teachers need more than GPK alone to feel well-supported by their OTL in these topics.
Given the importance of general pedagogical knowledge outlined in Chapter 1, it is valuable to investigate whether GPK varies across different types of teachers. This can provide a better understanding of how teachers develop their GPK and whether teachers’ need for support in developing GPK differs according to their characteristics. There is some evidence that teachers’ GPK is related to some characteristics, such as years of teaching experience, but not to others, such as gender (König et al., 2014[1]; Lauermann and König, 2016[2]; Sorge et al., 2017[3]). These findings, however, are based on smaller studies without representative samples of teachers. This chapter, therefore, analyses the relationships between teachers’ GPK and their gender, age, experience and subjects taught in the current school year.
As well as shaping levels of GPK, teachers’ personal characteristics may in turn be affected by their knowledge of general pedagogy, particularly in relation to their self-perceptions. The literature suggests that GPK operates alongside teachers’ beliefs and affective-motivational competencies in decision-making and selection of teaching approaches (Guerriero and Révai, 2017[4]). Therefore, this chapter also analyses the relationships between GPK and teachers’ self-efficacy. It also examines the relationships between GPK and teacher perceptions of their preparedness for various aspects of teaching.
Gender differences
Teaching is a highly feminised profession in almost every education system that participates in TALIS (OECD, 2025[5]). On average across the OECD, around 70% of lower secondary teachers are women. Women now tend to attain higher levels of education than men (OECD, 2025[6]), and results from PISA show that girls outperform boys in reading (OECD, 2023[7]), although among adults, gender differences in literacy tend to be small (OECD, 2024[8]).
Results from TKS mirror these international trends. Female teachers tend to display higher general pedagogical knowledge than their male colleagues. On average across OECD countries participating in the Teacher Knowledge Survey (henceforth, “on average”), they scored 5 points higher than their male colleagues, while representing about 70% of the teaching workforce (Table E.2.1, Table E.2.2 and Figure 2.1). The largest differences are observed in Croatia (15 points) and Saudi Arabia (14 points). In Portugal, South Africa and the United States, gender differences in GPK are not statistically significant. In no participating country do men have higher average scores than women.
Note: Countries are ranked in descending order according to average GPK of male teachers.
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Table E.2.1.
In six of the eight countries participating in TKS (Chile, Croatia, Morocco, Poland, Portugal and Saudi Arabia), male teachers are over-represented at the lower end of the national distribution of GPK, compared to their female colleagues. In Croatia, 40% of male teachers scored in the bottom quarter of the distribution, compared to 21% of female teachers – a gap of almost 19 percentage points (Table E.2.3). In Croatia, Poland and Saudi Arabia this is accompanied by a similar over-representation of female teachers at the higher end of the distribution. This is particularly evident in Saudi Arabia, where 34% of female teachers, but only 16% of male teachers, scored in the top quarter of the national distribution of GPK.
The observed gender differences in GPK could be due to differences between male and female teachers in other characteristics that, in turn, are related to GPK. For example, the average male and female teachers could have different years of experience or levels of education, they could teach different subjects, or work in different types of schools or with different students. Accounting for these compositional differences, indeed, does explain some of the observed gender differences, at least in some countries (Table E.2.4). In Chile, adjusted gender gaps (controlling for teacher and school characteristics) are lower than raw gender gaps by 1 score point; moreover, the uncertainty around the estimates increases, making the adjusted gaps not statistically different from zero. In Croatia, the gap between male and female teachers decreases by about 3 points when controlling for teacher characteristics but increases again by about 2 points when adding school-level controls. In Poland, controlling for teacher and school characteristics reduces the estimated gender gap from about 10 to 4 score points; in contrast to the raw gender gaps, adjusted gaps are not statistically different from zero.
Age and experience
GPK variation according to teachers’ age and experience provides insights into how and when teachers develop knowledge. If younger teachers outperform older teachers, that might suggest that initial teacher education has improved over time. On the other hand, if more experienced teachers tend to perform better than novice teachers, that could suggest that teachers develop much of their GPK through continuous professional development and collaboration with other teachers (see Chapter 3).
The relationship between teachers’ age, years of teaching experience and general pedagogical knowledge tends to vary across countries. In South Africa and Saudi Arabia, novice teachers (those with up to five years of teaching experience) have higher GPK scores, on average, than experienced teachers (those with more than ten years of teaching experience [Table E.2.1 and Figure 2.2]). In Portugal and the United States, by contrast, experienced teachers demonstrated higher GPK than their novice colleagues.
Note: Novice teachers are those with up to five years of teaching experience. Experienced teachers are those with more than ten years of teaching experience.
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Table E.2.1.
In South Africa and the United States, the analysis by teachers’ age mirrors the results for years of experience, with older teachers (50 and over) achieving higher GPK scores than their younger colleagues (below 30) in the United States, and lower GPK scores in South Africa. Morocco is the only other country in which teachers younger than 30 scored higher on the GPK assessment than those 50 and over.
Age and experience can be decoupled when teachers join the profession later, perhaps after a career change. In TALIS, these are called “second-career teachers” and are defined as teachers who report that teaching was not their first career choice and who have spent at least 10 years in a non-teaching role (OECD, 2025[5]).
The incidence of second-career teachers varies significantly across countries. Among the countries participating in TKS, the United States has the highest share of second-career teachers (16%), followed by Chile (7%) and Poland (6%) (Table E.2.5). The low number of second-career teachers makes it difficult to detect statistically significant differences in GPK: the estimated differences are non-negligible in size and tend to suggest that second-career teachers have lower GPK scores on average, but the uncertainty around these estimates is so great that the possibility that true differences are equal to zero cannot be rejected. Portugal and South Africa (where second-career teachers represent slightly less than 3% of the teaching workforce) are the only countries where the differences are so great that they are unlikely to be due to sampling or measurement error. In Portugal, second-career teachers scored about 14 points lower than non-second-career teachers, while in South Africa, the opposite seems to be true, with second-career teachers scoring about 18 points higher than non-second-career teachers (Table E.2.5).
Subject taught
There are no large or consistent differences in teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge across the subject areas they teach. Across the four OECD countries participating in TKS, science teachers (who constitute about one quarter of the population surveyed by the study) achieved the highest scores (Tables E.2.6 and E.2.7). However, differences between science teachers and non-science teachers are not usually statistically significant. In Portugal, science teachers scored 9 points higher than other teachers. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, science teachers actually scored 6 points lower than other teachers.
Across all countries (except Portugal), physical education teachers displayed lower GPK proficiency than teachers working in different subject areas. The gap is most pronounced in the United States (21 score points) and smallest in Morocco (5 score points). Portugal is the only country where the GPK scores of physical education teachers are not different than those of teachers in other subject areas.
As outlined in the TKS conceptual framework, teachers’ professional beliefs, alongside their knowledge, influence their decision-making and selection of teaching approaches (OECD, 2025[9]). From a socio-cognitive perspective, for example, self-efficacy beliefs provide teachers with the necessary motivation to use their knowledge (Fives, 2003[10]). Teachers may be less inclined to abandon a task if they feel capable of succeeding at it, and they may also be more willing to persevere through difficult experiences and set themselves more challenging goals (Lauermann, 2017[11]). However, few studies have directly investigated the relationship between GPK and beliefs such as teacher self-efficacy, and the results have been mixed (Depaepe and König, 2018[12]; Dicke et al., 2015[13]; Lauermann and König, 2016[2]; Malva, Leijen and Poom-Valickis, 2018[14]).
This section examines the relationships between GPK and teachers’ beliefs about their ability and preparedness to manage different areas of teaching. Given the importance of self-efficacy for a range of teacher outcomes, TKS 2024 asked teachers to assess their capacity to perform tasks related to classroom management, instruction, student engagement and additional areas of teaching. Teachers taking TKS were also asked about the extent to which they felt their initial teacher education (ITE) and subsequent professional learning prepared them for a range of topics across the following dimensions of general pedagogy: classroom instruction, student learning and assessment.
Teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge is not related to self-efficacy
In most countries, GPK scores are not associated with overall self-efficacy in teaching, which is an average measure of teachers’ self-efficacy in classroom management, instruction and student engagement. When a relationship exists, it is more often negative. This is the case for South Africa and Poland (Figure 2.3). A positive relationship between GPK and overall self-efficacy is only found in Saudi Arabia.
Note: Statistically significant coefficients are highlighted with filled circles and country labels (see Annex D). Filled circles above 0 indicate a positive association between teachers’ self-efficacy and their GPK score, while those below 0 reflect a negative relationship.
1. Standardised scale scores with a standard deviation of 2 and a mean of 10 corresponding to the item mid-point value of the response scale. For more information on the scales, see Annex D.
2. Results based on four separate linear regression analyses, showing the change in the scale of self-efficacy associated with a one-standard- deviation increase in GPK. The regressions control for teacher characteristics (gender, age and years of teaching experience) and school characteristics (school location, school governance type, school intake of students from socio-economically disadvantaged homes, school intake of students who have difficulties understanding the language(s) of instruction and school intake of students with special education needs).
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Tables E.2.8, E.2.9, E.2.10, E.2.11.
In most countries, there are no significant associations between GPK and most individual aspects of teaching self-efficacy contained in TKS. For example, GPK is related to teachers’ self-efficacy in classroom management in only three countries, with a positive relationship in Saudi Arabia and negative ones in Poland and South Africa (Figure 2.3). Similarly, GPK is positively related to teachers' self-efficacy in instruction only in Portugal and Saudi Arabia.
Conversely, self-efficacy in student engagement seems to be significantly related to teachers’ GPK. Higher GPK scores tend to predict less self-efficacy in student engagement, as is the case in Croatia, Poland, South Africa and the United States. However, teachers with higher GPK scores in Morocco and Saudi Arabia have more self-efficacy in this domain.
TKS 2024 also asked teachers about their self-efficacy in a number of additional areas, namely their capacity to:
support student learning by using digital resources and tools
help every student progress
reduce achievement gaps among students
support students’ social and emotional learning.
In at least half of the countries studied, TKS shows that GPK is related to teachers’ self-efficacy in helping every student progress, reducing achievement gaps, and supporting students’ social and emotional learning (Figure 2.4). These relationships are negative in all cases except for Saudi Arabia – although Saudi Arabia is the only country in which teachers’ GPK is significantly (and always positively) associated with every aspect of their self-efficacy, suggesting that these results might be influenced by cultural response patterns.
Note: Statistically significant coefficients are highlighted with filled circles and country labels (see Annex D).
1. Binary variables: the reference category refers to “not at all” and “to some extent”.
2. Results based on four separate binary logistic regressions. An odds ratio indicates the degree to which an explanatory variable is associated
with a categorical outcome variable. An odds ratio below 1 denotes a negative association; an odds ratio above 1 indicates a positive association;
and an odds ratio of 1 means that there is no association. The regressions control for teacher characteristics (gender, age and years of teaching experience) and school characteristics (school location, school governance type, school intake of students from socio-economically disadvantaged homes, school intake of students who have difficulties understanding the language(s) of instruction and school intake of students with special education needs).
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Table E.2.12.
Teachers with higher GPK scores may hold themselves to higher standards
In theory, having high GPK should facilitate the planning and teaching of effective lessons, thereby increasing the chances of positive mastery experiences that support teachers’ self-efficacy (Dicke et al., 2015[13]). However, knowledge does not guarantee its effective application, nor the belief that an individual has performed a task successfully (Fives, 2003[10]). In fact, it is possible that teachers with more knowledge possess higher performance standards, as they are more aware of the features of effective teaching – and the instances in which they have not incorporated these into their practice (Dicke et al., 2015[13]; Lauermann and König, 2016[2]). This seems likely, especially in cases where negative relationships are found between GPK and certain aspects of teacher self-efficacy.
It may also be the case that GPK and teacher self-efficacy interact, but not in a direct or linear fashion. Using cluster analysis, one recent study in Estonia identified three distinct groups of teachers based on their overall self-efficacy and GPK. This grouping included “competent” teachers with high GPK and high self-efficacy; “insecure” teachers with average GPK and low self-efficacy; and “over-confident” teachers with low GPK and average self-efficacy (Leijen et al., 2024[15]). Further research could therefore examine similar relationships between GPK and self-efficacy across a larger group of countries, considering different aspects of teachers’ self-efficacy and their connection with teachers’ outcomes.
In the model of teachers’ professional competence, teachers’ opportunities to learn influence both teachers’ knowledge and their affective-motivational competencies and beliefs (Guerriero and Révai, 2017[4]). High-quality opportunities to learn about general pedagogy may be expected to improve both teachers’ level of GPK and their beliefs about being well-prepared in these areas. Although research on the connections between GPK and OTL remains somewhat limited, some evidence suggests that GPK is associated with teachers’ OTL about certain topics related to general pedagogy (König et al., 2017[16]; OECD, 2025[9]).
Teachers with higher GPK scores do not feel more prepared for teaching
However, TKS data suggest that teachers with higher GPK are not more likely to believe that their initial teacher education and subsequent professional learning (i.e. the entirety of their OTL) prepared them well for teaching. In most countries, no relationships are found between teachers’ GPK and their beliefs in the extent to which their OTL prepared them in classroom instruction, student learning, and assessment (Figure 2.5). As with self-efficacy, Saudi Arabia is the only country where teachers’ GPK is positively associated with reported sense of preparedness across the three dimensions of GPK (instruction, learning and assessment). Meanwhile, in Poland, teachers with higher GPK reported a lower sense of preparedness in classroom instruction. A similar relationship emerges in South Africa for student learning and assessment.
Note: Statistically significant coefficients are highlighted with filled circles and country labels (see Annex D). Filled circles above 0 indicate a positive association between teachers’ beliefs about their preparation in topics related to general pedagogy and their GPK score, while those below 0 reflect a negative relationship.
1. Standardised scale scores with a standard deviation of 2 and a mean of 10 corresponding to the item mid-point value of the response scale. For more information on the scales, see Annex D.
2. Results based on three separate linear regression analyses, showing the change in the scale of beliefs about preparation associated with a one-standard-deviation increase in GPK. The regressions control for teacher characteristics (gender, age and years of teaching experience) and school characteristics (school location, school governance type, school intake of students from socio-economically disadvantaged homes, school intake of students who have difficulties understanding the language(s) of instruction and school intake of students with special education needs).
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Table E.2.13, E.2.14, E.2.15.
There are several possible explanations for the lack of relationships found between GPK and teachers’ perceptions of their OTL. Similar to self-efficacy, higher performance standards may accompany greater awareness of different ways to create effective teaching and learning environments. As a result, teachers with high GPK may be more critical of their pedagogical training and learning opportunities.
It could also be that perceptions of preparedness are more strongly influenced by other factors that mediate between teacher knowledge and actual practice. For example, teachers need certain skills to apply their knowledge in practice, such as noticing relevant classroom events and linking interpretations of these events to prior knowledge (Guerriero, 2017[17]). To feel adequately prepared by their OTL, teachers might need opportunities to apply their knowledge. This is supported by data from TALIS 2024, where 85% of teachers reported that opportunities to practise or apply new ideas and knowledge was an important characteristic of professional learning, on average across the 27 participating OECD countries (OECD, 2024[18]). Of all the characteristics included in the survey, this had the highest average share of teachers assigning it “quite a bit” or “a lot” of importance. Further research would be needed to ascertain how GPK and teachers’ perceptions of their preparation relate to the features of OTL offered, as TKS lacks an objective measure of the quality or even the quantity of teachers’ OTL.
Knowledgeable teachers feel much more prepared for lesson design than for classroom management and supporting diverse learners
Data from TKS 2024 show that teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness for different aspects of teaching vary greatly, even when they have relatively high levels of GPK. Limiting analyses of OTL to teachers with high levels of GPK provides insights into what the most knowledgeable and discerning teachers believed prepared them most. Teachers scoring in the top quarter of the national distribution of GPK scores (i.e., the 25% of teachers with the highest GPK scores in each country) are particularly positive about their preparedness for lesson design, a core dimension of instruction. Out of 10 topics related to different dimensions of general pedagogy, lesson design is the one for which knowledgeable teachers report a high sense of preparedness in six of the eight participating countries (Figure 2.6). In all countries, lesson design is among the top three topics for which knowledgeable teachers were prepared “quite a bit” or “a lot”.
It is also common for these knowledgeable teachers to report feeling prepared for certain aspects of student learning and assessment. In six countries, the top three topics that knowledgeable teachers report being prepared “quite a bit” or “a lot” for included different purposes for assessment (Figure 2.6). Educational theories of learning also featured in the top three topics for knowledgeable teachers in four participating countries.
Percentage of teachers in the top quartile of the national GPK distribution reporting that their formal teacher education and/or subsequent professional learning prepared them “quite a bit” or “a lot” in the following topics
Note: Topics are sorted in descending order of the OECD average share of teachers reporting that they were prepared in it “quite a bit” or “a lot” by their opportunities to learn.
Students with SEN refer to students with special education needs.
Source: OECD, TALIS TKS 2024 Database, Tables E.2.16, E.2.17, E.2.18, E.2.19.
In contrast, knowledgeable teachers are less likely to report feeling prepared for topics related to supporting diverse learners. Teaching in a multicultural setting is one of the three topics that knowledgeable teachers reported being least prepared for (“quite a bit” or “a lot”) in seven out of eight participating countries (Figure 2.6). Accommodating students with special education needs was also among the three topics for which knowledgeable teachers were least prepared in six countries studied.
Country context, including the development of various education policies, could help to explain some of the differences observed between countries. For example, teaching in a multicultural setting may be a topic that teachers encounter in their OTL relatively more frequently in South Africa. Principles of multicultural education have been promoted since 1996 with the South African Schools Act, which requires schools to “promote and advance our diverse cultures and languages” (Republic of South Africa, 1996[19]). The importance of multiculturalism is reflected in the content of teachers’ recent professional learning. TALIS 2024 tells us that 64% of teachers in South Africa who recently participated in professional learning activities learned about teaching in multicultural or multilingual settings (OECD, 2024[18]). This was far higher than the average share (30%) of teachers across the 27 participating OECD countries.
Sense of preparedness for student behaviour and classroom management is also relatively low compared to other areas of teaching. This topic is among the three least frequently reported by knowledgeable teachers as an area in which they were prepared “quite a bit” or “a lot” in six of eight participating countries (Figure 2.6).
Differences in teachers’ perceptions of the extent to which their professional learning opportunities prepared them for these topics could reflect differences in the quality or availability of relevant OTL. For these topics, knowledgeable teachers may have developed their GPK through self-initiated learning to account for gaps in their formal training and subsequent professional learning. However, it is also possible that some areas of teaching are more exclusively reliant on teachers’ GPK, while others require a broader range of skills and competencies, or practical experience, for teachers to feel prepared. For example, knowledge about lesson design may be easier to translate directly into day-to-day teaching practice than knowledge about classroom management, which requires teachers to notice and interpret classroom events and then decide how to apply relevant GPK in the moment.
Further research will be needed to shed light on the relationships between GPK, teachers’ beliefs and the quality of their professional learning. If GPK does not explain the variation in teachers’ perceptions of their preparation, it would be interesting to know whether there are certain features of professional learning that help teachers feel more prepared, especially in areas where teachers feel relatively unprepared despite having higher GPK. A better understanding of these relationships can then inform evaluations of the quality of teachers’ professional learning and policies that support teachers in developing their pedagogical practice.
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