As all professionals, teacher educators are expected to develop themselves continuously during their working life in order to keep their knowledge and skills up to date. Smith (2003, p203) distinguishes three reasons for teacher educators to develop themselves: 1) to improve the profession (teacher education); 2) to maintain interest in the profession, to grow personally and professionally and 3) to advance within the profession, promotion. At the teacher education institute of the Fontys University of Applied Science, teacher educators are stimulated by the management to spend 10-15% of their working hours on professional development. Do teacher educators spend these hours and if they dos so, what purpose do they have in mind? What activities do they undertake to develop themselves? What topics do they choose for professional development? Are there differences between more experienced teacher educators and beginning teacher educators? To study these questions, a questionnaire was held by all 228 teacher educators working at the Fontys teacher education institute. At this institute, about 4000 student-teachers are educated to become a teacher in secondary or vocational education. First impressions of the results show that 33% of the teacher educators spend 10-15% of their time on professional development. A large group of teacher educators (42%) spends less then 10% and a small group (23%) spends more then 15% of their time on professional development. The main reason for teacher educators to professionalize themselves is to improve the quality of their teaching to students. This refers to the second reason Smith (2003) mentions. Improving the profession or advance within the profession (reason 1 and 3 in Smith's list) were much less often mentioned. The four activities most mentioned by teacher educators to develop themselves were reading of (scientific) literature (1), followed by collegial consultation (2), attending conferences or meetings (3) and trying out new approaches and systematically evaluating them (4). The topics teacher educators develop themselves in vary from didactical subjects to coaching skills, subject-specific topics and ICT-skills. Further analysis to reveal whether there are differences between experienced and beginning teachers is still in progress, but will be available at the conference in August 2011. References: Smith, K (2003). So, what about the professional development of teacher educators? European Journal of Teacher Education, Vol 26, No2, pp201-215
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The attention for teacher educators as professionals and their professional development is indeed increasing. While much of the attention has been directed to novice teacher educators little has been paid to experienced teacher educators and their particular developmental activities. This paper presents findings on teacher educators’ professional development. 25 interviews were conducted, mainly with experienced teacher educators in Israel, The Netherlands and Japan. Teacher educators’ concerns vary across their careers. During their induction they are rather focused on surviving, whereas later on in their careers their concerns are linked to their own professional identity and their students as individuals. A large number of participants were involved in research and they all experience research as an important mean for their professional development. All participants were involved in formal and informal learning activities and they have plans for their further professional development but sometimes foresee hinders, like resources and time, to realize their plans. The interview data did not provide any strong evidence to suggest country-specific patterns.
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Nowadays educational challenges require increasing pedagogical tact of teachers. Intuition serves this swift and appropriate classroom action, but teachers are rarely encouraged to use it. This mixed methods study investigated the effects of intuition-focused professional development on teachers' pedagogical tact. Questionnaires measured teacher change, and showed large positive effects on teachers’ immediate pedagogical actions, and medium effects on the related classroom outcomes. Interviews with participants and their colleagues elaborated and explained positive changes in awareness of intuitions, and information processing, and classroom impact. This study defines and operationalizes intuitive pedagogical tact and describes meditative and embodied practices for enhancing it.
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Sociocultural and dialogic theories of education have identified the need to integrate both pedagogical content and language knowledge into teachers’ professional development to promote effective interaction with students about subject content. In this intervention study, a meta-perspective on language was developed to understand how experienced teacher educators (N = 29) conceptualize ongoing language development in professional learning and teaching (referred to as language-developing learning in this study) as part of their pedagogical content knowledge. The data were analysed using content analysis. Language-developing learning was mainly conceived as teacher-oriented professional development. In this process, the language aspect was regarded not only as a tool that applies regulatory and explanatory language but also as a target that connects academic knowledge and interpersonally oriented language. The results increase our awareness of teacher educators’ practical knowledge of academic and interpersonal language in specific disciplinary contexts of teacher professional development in higher education.
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This study aimed to examine which kind of support through professional development activities is offered to teacher educators in the (Dutch) teacher education institutes for primary and secondary education regarding conducting practice-based research and supervising students’ research. Two online surveys were executed among deans and teacher educators to examine their views on institutional policies supporting professional development; the offered activities; their evaluation on the activities and teacher educators further needs for professional development. Results show that little attention is paid to professional development activities and if attention is paid it concerns mainly courses or supervised peer-exchange groups. However, support for professional development of teacher educators in conducting research and supervising students’ research is considered important. Most activities are executed isolated in each institute. A need for more collaboration between institutes on contributing to teacher educators’ professional development and collaboration at a national level is considered important.
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The professional development of teacher educators is increasingly acknowledged as a topic of paramount importance. This is partly due to the stronger emphasis on improving the quality of teacher education programs and as a consequence of the increasing focus on lifelong learning of those responsible for teaching student teachers. Teacher educators themselves are also showing a greater interest in their own professional development, which is reflected in the rise of publications on this topic. A number of recent studies have been devoted to teacher educators' professional development, with the emphasis on induction of novice teacher educators. The attention for professional development beyond the induction stage is also increasing however studies that allow an international comparison of further professional development practices are rather scarce. Over the past two years the RDC Professional Development of Teacher Educators conducted an explorative international comparison to deepen our understanding in this area. The main research theme of this study concerned experienced teacher educators' ongoing professional development activities and how these may contribute to the further development of their qualities and the kinds of factors (person-related and institute-related) that impact, positively or negatively, their professional development. The study focused on teacher educators with at least 5 years and no more than 20 years experience as a teacher educator. In total 23 teacher educators from a range of different countries participated in the study. A highly structured interview guideline was adopted to ensure sufficient opportunities for comparison between the interviewees' answers. Existing research instruments were inspected and all RDC members were involved in the process of composing the interview guideline. Topics for its content were discussed during the RDC meetings at the 2009 ATEE Conference at Majorca, and later on members were invited to provide feedback by e-mail on the draft version. All interviews have been transcribed, and were sent to the interviewees for their approval of the interview report. This presentation will provide a comparison analysis of the interview data followed by an interpretation of its outcomes and its implications for improving practice and further research.
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Professional development of teacher educators is an important issue. In order to be able to teach the teachers of the future, teacher educators have to keep their own knowledge and skills 'future proof'. When it comes to professional development, very often people think of 'attending courses'. But attending courses to keep up knowledge and/or skills, is only a small aspect of the broad range of possible activities to fill in ones professional development. A lot of professional development takes place at work, the so-called workplace-learning or informal learning. In this study we look at the professional development of teacher educators through informal learning. Often forms of informal learning are not recognized by the learner, because they are so integrated with work. In this study the goal is to stimulate awareness of informal learning processes by teacher educators. Teacher educators use a logbook and report daily, weekly or once in three weeks what they have learned. After a three-week period they analyse their logbooks by looking at 'what is learned, 'how is learned', with or from who is learned'. This study has two types of outcomes: (1) awareness of the informal learning processes of the participating teacher educators themselves and (2) insights into the processes of stimulating awareness of informal learning processes. The study is in progress (march 2012) and we will present our findings at the conference in Antwerp.
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In this paper the focus is on professional development through informal learning. People learn a lot while performing tasks and doing their jobs, but they are not always aware of these processes. Encouraging the awareness for informal learning is a first step towards acknowledgement of informal learning activities as forms of professional development by teacher educators and their managers. In this paper, we describe a procedure to encourage awareness of informal learning. The procedure consists of keeping a logbook on learning experiences during three weeks. At the end of the period the participants discussed their experiences in a meeting and analysed their own logbooks using an analysis tool. Both keeping a logbook and analysing this logbook led to a raise in the awareness of informal learning, at least, during and shortly after the intervention. The participants got to know their own learning processes, found the logbook-keeping an interesting thing to do and sometimes were surprised by the ways they learned.
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This study reports on what 13 teacher educators going through a procedure to become registered as a teacher educator in 2011–2012 learned, what goals they formulated for their further professional development and what activities they planned to achieve these goals. The methods used in this study are mainly the same as were used at the time the first cohort went through the registration procedure in 2002. The 2012 cohort participated in a supportive programme, whereas the 2002 cohort did not. This enables a comparison of the results of both studies and thus some insight into the possible benefits of integrating a registration procedure with a supportive programme for the professional development of teacher educators.
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The professional development of teacher educators is increasingly being recognised as a topic of paramount importance. This is partly caused by the stronger emphasis on improving the quality of teacher education programs and as a consequence on attention for the lifelong learning of those responsible for teaching the student teachers. But also teacher educators themselves show a greater interest in their own professional development, which is reflected in the rise of publications on this topic. A number of studies have been devoted to teacher educators' professional development, with the emphasis on induction of teacher educators. The attention for professional development beyond the induction stage is recently increasing but studies that allow international comparison of further professional development practices are rather scarce. The RDC Professional Development of Teacher Educators conducted an explorative study to deepen our understanding in this area. The main research theme of this study concerns teacher educators' professional development activities and how these contribute to the further development of their qualities and the kinds of factors (person-related and institute-related) that contribute, positively or negatively, to their professional development. Special attention is paid to exploring possible country-specific differences concerning professional development. The study focused on experienced teacher educators with at least 5 years and no more than 20 years experience as a teacher educator. In total 11 teacher educators stemming from different countries were included in the study. Participants were recruited from RDC members' personal networks. The interviewees work in six different countries, five are from Israel, one is from The Netherlands, one from Czech Republic, one from Australia, two from Slovenia and one from England. It was decided to opt for a highly structured interview guideline that ensures sufficient opportunities for comparison between the interviewees' answers. Existing research instruments were inspected and all RDC members were involved in the process of composing the interview guideline. Topics for its content were discussed during the RDC meetings at the 2009 ATEE Conference at Majorca, and later on members were invited to provide feedback by e-mail on the draft version. The first set of 11 interview reports will be discussed during the RDC meetings of the 2010 ATEE conference in Budapest. At this moment the analysis of the interview data takes place which is conducted by two researchers, and this will be followed by an interpretation of its outcomes by all authors involved in this paper. The analysis focuses on describing similarities and differences and on exploring the factors contributing to teacher educators' professional development. The presentation provide the main outcomes of the study and discussion on its implications for improving practice and further research.
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