Teacher Professional Development in Impact Evaluation Research : a focus on the inquiry-based paradigm

The article presents a scoping review of impact-evaluation studies on professional development (PD) for in service teachers, describing how PD initiatives are characterised in this research field and examining their alignment with inquiry-based approaches, taking the Ricerca-Formazione (R-F) paradigm as a reference. The review identified 861 studies published between 2014 and 2023; after applying exclusion criteria, 159 articles were analysed following PRISMA guidelines. Findings reveal substantial variability and frequent gaps in how PD initiatives are described, which hampers efforts to investigate the quality of PD relating impact evaluation to the specific cha-racteristics of the programmes. When mapped against the R-F paradigm key principles, most PD initiatives display only limited alignment. Contextual analysis and documentation-supported reflection emerge as the most frequently represented, whereas negotiated goals and structured teacher researcher collaboration are seldom described. [Publisher's

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