When conceptualizing the meaning of a good teacher, Shulman’s (1987) theory of the teacher knowledge base enables an understanding of what professional knowledge is. Shulman described content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), as well as general pedagogical knowledge (GPK), as important features of teacher competence and teaching quality, promoting student progress. The idea of PCK was introduced as the subject matter knowledge for teaching and is seen as an influential factor for student outcome (Shulman, 1986). Coursework and teaching experience, among other aspects of formal teacher qualifications, are considered to capture teachers’ content knowledge (Baumert et al., 2010; Toropova, Johansson, & Myrberg, 2019). Cognitively challenging/activating learning opportunities, individual learning support, and effective classroom management are considered to capture teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (Baumert et al., 2010), as well as teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1987).

Furthermore, previous research underscores profession-specific knowledge for fostering students’ learning (Baumert et al., 2010; Blömeke, Olsen, & Suhl, 2016; Kunter et al., 2013; Toropova et al., 2019). There is evidence that subject-specific pedagogy attained through formal, high-quality teacher education is an important aspect in teaching mathematics (Baumert et al., 2010). Some studies have also demonstrated that the largest teacher effects are found in relation to student outcomes in mathematics as opposed to reading (Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004). One reason suggested for this is that mathematics is to a large extent learned in school and may be more influenced by teachers, while reading, on the other hand, may be learned to some extent outside of school (Nye et al., 2004).

In Sweden, teacher education has been reformed several times during the past decades. This implies that teachers have varying degrees of specialization i.e., relevant education for teaching the actual subject and grade. However, it is not clear whether students with teachers with a higher degree of specialization achieve better, nor it is clear if students perceive the instructional quality of the specialized teachers as better. Even though previous research paid great attention to the relationships between teaching qualifications and student achievement in primary and secondary school in the recent past (Baier et al., 2019; Baumert & Kunter, 2013; Baumert et al., 2010; Blömeke et al., 2016; Kunter et al., 2013) research has not accumulated the same amount of evidence regarding the relationship between different combinations of teachers’ subject-specialization and student achievement and perceived instructional quality – especially in the primary school years (Depaepe, Verschaffel, & Kelchtermans, 2013). The current study investigates the importance of teacher specialization for mathematics achievement in fourth grade using TIMSS 2019 data. The study also investigates whether students perceive the instructional quality of specialized teachers as better. More specifically, the research questions are:

1.)   To what extent is teachers’ specialization related to students’ mathematics achievement in grade 4?

2.)   Is teachers’ mathematics specialization positively associated with student assessed teacher instructional quality?

The data come from Sweden’s participation in the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2019). TIMSS is organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and is conducted every fourth year. The data was retrieved from the official website of TIMSS (http://timssandpirls.bc.edu) and we specifically took advantage of the data from the mathematics assessment and background questionnaires to the fourth-grade students and their teachers. To answer our research questions, we selected information about teachers’ education, such as tertiary education, certification status, and subject orientation during teacher training. TIMSS provides a detailed specification of the differences in teachers’ education and we used this information to categorize teachers’ education into a variable that indicated higher and lower degrees of specialization for teaching mathematics in grade four. From students, we retrieved information about their perceived instructional quality and achievement in mathematics. The proposed study relies on multilevel regression to account for potential cluster effects that are due to the hierarchical nature of the data (e.g., Hox, 2002). Sampling weights were used to account for the stratification. Furthermore, analyses involving student achievement were run for all five plausible values to provide accurate standard errors. Initially, we used the scales that were constructed by the IEA (e.g., for student perceived instructional quality). In a next step, we will consider using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to model latent variables. The main programs for data analysis will be IEA IDB analyzer, SPSS 28, and Mplus version 8 software.

The initial analyses revealed quite some variation as regards the degree of teachers’ specialization. Descriptive statistics indicated that 85.9% of the Swedish students in TIMSS have a mathematics teacher with a Major in Education, of which 82.7% have a specialization in Mathematics. Moreover, a number of the teachers did not have any formal teacher education. Furthermore, only 10% of the Swedish mathematics teachers have a Master’s or equivalent level of education. Based on this information we constructed a new variable ‘teacher specialization’ ranging from most specialized to least specialized. When we related this variable to student achievement preliminary results suggest a positive relationship to student math achievement. In more concrete terms, results indicated that the combination of a Major in Primary education with a specialization in Mathematics or in Mathematics and Science is more beneficial for students’ mathematics achievement than just having a Major in Primary education, or a Major in Primary or Secondary education in combination with other specializations. Furthermore, our results found no significant relationship between student perceived instructional quality and teachers’ degree of specialization. The paper presentation will provide more details of these relationships and it will discuss reasons behind the non-existing relationship between student perceived instructional quality and teacher specialization.

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