For over two decades, the work of teacher educators and the subsequent importance of their professional development have been the focus of increased attention from practitioners and researchers (see Izadinia, 2014; Loughran, 2014; Cochran-Smith et al., 2019). Significantly, international policy makers have also realised how central this occupational group is in both teacher education and in improving schooling systems; because of this, their professional development has become of particular importance.
In 2005, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published the report Teachers Matter stating the importance of teachers for improving student learning. It took another eight years, however, before the European Commission acknowledged officially that those who teach the teachers â the teacher educators â also matter in pan-European policy making. Their report reads:
Teacher educators are crucial players for maintaining â and improving â the high quality of the teaching workforce. They can have a significant impact upon the quality of teaching and learning in our schools. Yet they are often neglected in policy-making, meaning that some Member States do not always benefit fully from the knowledge and experience of this key profession. It also means that teacher educators do not always get the support and challenge they need, for example in terms of their education and professional development.
(European Commission, 2013, p. 4)1
A major emphasis in official reports (e.g., OECD, 2018) is that, because of socio-economic, cultural and technological changes in all societies globally, schooling and teacher education both need to respond rapidly to ensure that education remains relevant and meaningful to social needs.
This chapter opens with a brief analysis of teacher education policies, but any such attempt needs to take account of the broad changes taking place globally. These are clearly many and complex, and it is beyond the remit of this chapter to discuss them at length. We note, however, that in the last two decades, wide-ranging and frequent socio-economical, geo-political and technological changes have brought unexpected, global challenges for educational policy makers and practitioners. These factors form powerful background influences on how education âreformsâ for teacher education are devised, implemented and evaluated; those reforms in turn have significant implications for teacher educators and for their professional development.
Pre-service teacher education is now a policy driver to change schooling through often fast-changing policy requirements and the systematic politicisation of teacher education. Kosnik et al. (2016) identify eight types of international teacher education âreformsâ. Seven of these are about pre-service teacher provision; they can be grouped into two inter-linked categories: 1) increased, external regulation and surveillance; and 2) reforms re-focusing curriculum content, format and/or the location of pre-service programmes. All these reforms have had implications for the demographics and work of teacher educators and, consequently, for their professional development needs.
Examples of Kosnik et al.âs (2016) second category of reforms include moves towards more âresearch-basedâ modes of teacher education. Trends include: more emphasis on the importance of research in curricula, the growth of masterâs level programmes and teaching moving from colleges to universities. These trends have changed teacher education, the location of teacher educatorsâ work and their professional development in many countries. For example, in Ireland, teacher educatorsâ work has moved from colleges of higher education to universities. In Norway a move to masterâs level courses is one of the drivers behind NAFOL (Nasjonal forskerskole for lĂŚrerutdanning), a professional development programme that enables teacher educators to gain doctorates in order to be able to supervise masterâs students (Smith, 2020).
But at the same time, other reforms have aimed to make teacher education more âpracticalâ, with âtwo main ways of achieving this ⌠proposed: (a) enhancing the theory-practice connection in campus courses; and, (b) linking the campus program more closely with the schoolsâ (Kosnik et al., 2016, p. 273). This âpracticum turnâ (Mattsson et al., 2011) has certainly been a noted feature of teacher education policy internationally (OECD, 2012, as cited in Kosnik et al., 2016; European Commission, 2015). This turn has been implemented differently in various countries. For example, in parts of the United States and in England, it has resulted in âa hyper-emphasis on clinical practice â extensive immersion in the field, (and) limited (or no) emphasis on research or âtheoreticalâ course workâ (Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013, p. 335). Here, traditional, higher-education based pre-service routes are often under threat, school-led training proliferates and teacher educators may see themselves as living in an educational landscape that is subject to criticisms (Cochran-Smith et al., 2019). But in parts of continental Europe, the âpracticum turnâ has involved following a model in which âresearch-informed practiceâ and âspecialist training schoolsâ are part of pre-service provision in both universities and schools. One example here is in the Netherlands, where teacher educators from higher education institutions and mentors collaborate to provide âresearch-richâ teacher education (Van Velzen et al., 2019).
Internationally, teacher educators have acknowledged to be a heterogeneous occupational group (Izadinia, 2014), working in many roles to support pre- and in-service teachers, usually from within a higher education institution. There has been a well acknowledged âproblem of definitionâ (Ducharme, 1993, p. 2) in discussing this group, partly because of the diverse roles and work patterns within the field and issues around self- and communal-ownership of the term âteacher educatorâ. Certainly, determining who is a teacher educator can be challenging because the term is so blurred, multidimensional and often context dependent (Murray, 2017; Smith & Flores, 2019). For the purposes of clarity, here we have adopted the inclusive definition that âa teacher educator is someone who contributes in a formal way to the learning and development of teachersâ (Snoek et al., 2011, p. 652).
To explore this issue further, we present definitions of three different types of teacher educators, generating our analysis from the location for work and the roles undertaken. These are inevitably somewhat simplistic, given the complexity of the field. In our three types, we have not, for example, included community-based teacher educators (White, 2019) or university academics in disciplines outside education, cited by the European Commission (2013) as teacher educators because they teach the teachers of the future in under-graduate subject degrees.
The first type is what we term the âtraditional groupâ of teacher educators â that is, people employed within higher education institutes of some kind. Defined by Ducharme (1993) as âan ill-defined and poorly understood segment of the higher education faculty populationsâ (p. 3), this occupational group were once seen as âhiddenâ and under-researched (Maguire, 1994). Since the 1990s, however, research on teacher educators, their identities and their practices as teachers and researchers has grown steadily (Izadinia, 2014). Large-scale research studies on the career pathways and qualifications of this type of teacher educator are rare2, but smaller-scale work shows that individuals usually enter higher education work through one of two main routes: either what Davey (2013) terms the âpractitioner pathwayâ (moving into academia after working as a school teacher, frequently without a doctorate); or the âacademic pathwayâ (entry into teacher education comes after PhD study, sometimes without experience of school teaching). In some countries, for example, the United States and Israel, most teacher educators enter on the âacademic pathwayâ; in others, for example, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, entry is usually on the âpractitioner pathwayâ; in other countries, for example, Norway and Australia, entry patterns are either mixed or rapidly changing.
In terms of work, Lunenberg et al.âs (2014) systematic review concluded that this âtraditional groupâ of teacher educators has at least six different roles: teacher of teachers, researcher, coach, curriculum developer, gate-keeper and broker. There are, of course, other roles within work patterns: for example, Maguire (1994) notes the often gendered and intensive work of caring for students or academic âhouse-keepingâ in bureaucratically inclined universities; Ellis et al. (2013) identify the work of ârelationship maintenanceâ between schools, students and the university. But teacher educators are usually not required to undertake all these roles during their working lives. Depending on the exact work pattern then, teacher educatorsâ roles and identities â and therefore their professional development needs â will vary.
One example here is the variable requirement for active engagement in research. Contractual arrangements and associated career structures in some universities value research activities over pedagogical practices. Some teacher educators, with heavy teaching loads and/or engagement in supporting the student practicum, may then face challenges in becoming and remaining research active (Smith & Flores, 2019). This is often particularly so for those entering from school teaching. Beyond institutional demands, teacher educatorsâ dispositions and senses of agency are also important. Tack and Vanderlindeâs (2014) typology identified teacher educatorsâ âresearcherly dispositionâ, defined as âthe habit of mind to engage in research and thus to produce both local knowledge and public knowledge on teacher educationâ (p. 301). These authors argue that teacher educators need to invest in their own professional development to develop such a âresearcherly dispositionâ.
Our second type of teacher educator is that of mentors or supervising teachers, that is those who work within a school to oversee studentsâ practicums or guide newly qualified teachers. Mentors have long been central to high quality teacher education, but their importance in providing high quality learning has become more widely recognised since the generation of more inclusive definitions of teacher educators as an occupational group. As we identify below, the professional development needs of this type of teacher educator have been extensively researched since the early 1990s. More recent initiatives to develop mentorsâ pedagogical skills have included Van Velzen et al.âs (2019) research in the Netherlands on enhancing modelling skills, and a Norwegian programme for enhancing mentoring skills and practice-orientated research (Smith & Ulvik, 2015).
The third type is that of school-based teacher educators. The emergence of this type can be clearly traced to the development of school-led models of teacher education in the last decade. Working sometimes in partnership with higher education institutes and sometimes autonomously, this group takes on nearly all of the roles identified above for the traditional group of teacher educators (White, 2019), with the possible exception of research. Identified as âhybrid teacher educatorsâ by Zeichner (2010, p. 90), Czerniawski et al. (2019) further describe these educators as having âhybrid, poly-contextualised identitiesâ (p. 171). White (2019) shows some of the benefits and challenges that this type face in their dual roles as teacher and teacher educator. Little is known about the professional development needs of this emerging group, although White (2019) states that these include pedagogical approaches such as explicit modelling.
