as such countries are especially interested in learning more about their own teaching workforce and making comparisons with other countries in order to develop more effective policies to improve teaching and learning the first section focuses on teacher characteristics and provides a profile of lower secondary teachers with selected information provided for primary and upper secondary teachers analyses in this section focus on demographic characteristics such as the age and gender of teachers their employment status their formal education and their previous work experience this chapter also looks at these characteristics in relation to how teachers are distributed across a system in rural or urban areas or in schools deemed to be in more or less challenging environments