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.