Cross-national variation in teachers’ status as professionals: a sociological and teacher-centered approach

Whether teaching qualifies as a profession has been a longstanding debate. Inspired by the work of Ingersoll and Collins (2018), this paper studies cross-national variation in seven characteristics of the teaching profession. We examine their mutual interrelationships and relate these characteristics to job satisfaction and PISA results. Data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 (TALIS; 49 regions/countries) show that in general, the correlations between the different characteristics of professionalization are not sufficiently high to constitute one dimension. Regarding autonomy, a crucial element in debates about the teaching profession, we find that autonomy in the classroom is unrelated to autonomy related to decisions at the school level. Moreover, both aspects of autonomy show different correlations with (1) other characteristics of professionalization, and (2) PISA scores and teachers' job satisfaction. Our findings highlight the need for a debate about which aspects of professionalization are most relevant for specific outcomes.