Conference Program

The “impact” of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has become a central policy imperative and a frequent object of evaluation, yet its meaning remains contested and often reduced to linear, measurable effects on teacher knowledge, classroom practices, or student outcomes. Recent developments in impact evaluation of TPD shift the focus from linear effects to contextualized and hierarchical models, linking professional learning to changes in teacher attitudes, practices, and student outcomes (Guskey, 2002; Bubb & Earley, 2010). This approach aligns with the European Commission frameworks, which emphasize broader contextual effects in teacher training, including institutional and community outreach. This contribution reports the design and early findings of an INDIRE–CRESPI collaborative scoping review aimed at mapping how “impact” is conceptualised and operationalised in recent review-level literature on in-service TPD, and at identifying methodological and political tensions embedded in prevailing evaluation models.

Methodologically, the study adopts a PRISMA-informed scoping approach, explicitly oriented to detect conceptual “grey areas”, competing definitions, and evaluation blind spots, rather than to estimate a single pooled effect. Following a multi-database search strategy and deduplication workflow, the corpus was progressively refined from a broad pool of records to a manageable subset for abstract screening, with a deliberate focus on review-based studies (systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews) and on K–12 contexts.

The analytic framework is organised around six mapping questions: (1) definitions of impact (as change, transfer, transformation, sustainability); (2) units of analysis (teacher, school, system) and students as indirect beneficiaries, in K-12; (3) types of effects measured (e.g., impact on teachers’ attitudes, conceptions, knowledge, skills, practices; impact on students’ perceptions, attitudes, achievement); (4) temporal assumptions (short-term gains vs lasting effects/fade-out); (5) measurement logics (standardised indicators, self-report, observational/artefact-based evidence, multi-level models); (6) role of context and agency (how organisational conditions, professional cultures, and teacher decision-making mediate or re-define “what counts” as impact).

By making explicit how review studies frame attribution, causality, and “evidence”, the contribution speaks to the panel’s call to interrogate the epistemological and methodological implications of impact-driven evaluation, and to propose more contextualised and participatory perspectives. We conclude by outlining a preliminary conceptual map that distinguishes impact-as-accountability from impact-as-professional learning ecology, and by proposing implications for future research designs and policy uses of evaluation in large-scale TPD.