A quasi-experimental impact study of a professional development course for secondary mathematics teachers in South Africa

International audience We report on the impact of a mathematics professional development course on teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching and their learners’ attainment. Teachers’ scores on a mathematics test improved significantly. Using a quasi-experimental design we examined the learning gains of Grade 9 learners (N=991) from nine secondary schools taught by teachers who had attended the course. We compared these results with those of learners (N=988) in the same schools taught by teachers who had not participated in the course. The intervention group learners made larger gains but these were not statistically significant. The teachers who had done the course had far fewer years of teaching mathematics at senior secondary level than their colleagues. This highlights the importance of a matched comparison teacher sample in impact studies.