ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1577721
The Impact of Teaching Materials on Instructional Design and Teacher Development
Provisionally accepted
- 1eduki, Berlin, Germany
- 2The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
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This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the dual role of teaching materials in supporting both instructional design and teacher professional development. Through a largescale survey (n=2,585) of German-speaking educators across multiple subjects and experience levels, all users of an online set of resources combined with meta-analytical frameworks, we identify distinct patterns in how teaching materials influence teacher development across career stages.Our findings highlight the nuanced role of teaching materials in shaping both instructional design and professional development across teacher career stages. The influence of teaching materials on instructional design is most pronounced among trainees (3.55 on a 4-point scale), with a slight decline as teachers gain experience (3.47 for very experienced teachers). In contrast, the impact on professional growth remains consistently high (3.82) and even increases among very experienced educators (3.91), underscoring the sustained importance of materials in ongoing development. Teacher-generated materials emerge as the most impactful, with 90.1% of teachers finding them extremely or quite useful, compared to 70.1% for publisher materials and just 38.6% for institution-produced content. Additionally, 94.1% of teachers report having autonomy in selecting their materials, reflecting strong teacher agency. This autonomy correlates with increased classroom confidence, particularly when using self-created resources (79%), compared to publisher (51.2%) and institution-produced materials (30.5%).These insights suggest that empowering teachers to create and select their own materials enhances instructional design and fosters professional growth and confidence in the classroom.
Keywords: Teaching Materials, instructional design, Career-stage differentiation, teacher development, Pedagogical knowledge Lola Garay: Conceptualization, methodology, analysis, Writing -original draft
Received: 16 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Garay Abad and Hattie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lola Garay Abad, eduki, Berlin, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.