Contributions of Qualitative Research to Research on Teacher Qualifications

The influence of teachers’ qualifications on their teaching practice has been subject to debate. Literature reviews do not settle these debates, partly because the literature is uneven and partly because reviews capture only narrow slices of literature. In particular, many reviews eliminate qualitative studies. Yet without examining qualitative evidence, variations in quantitative findings are difficult to interpret, disappointing findings are difficult to understand, and plausible explanations of patterns are in short supply. The present review focuses on qualitative studies and compares their findings with those from quantitative literature. The author finds that the qualitative literature agrees with quantitative literature in its inability to distinguish between teachers with different types of certificates or different teacher education backgrounds. On the other side, the author finds more evidence of benefit from content knowledge than quantitative studies have typically found. The qualitative studies also reveal competing influences and offer hypotheses about why the outcomes look the way they do.