The Professional Development of Teacher Educators in Scotland: researcherly dispositions and tensions.

Abstract

This paper explores the professional learning needs identified by teacher educators in Higher Education Institutions in Scotland, with a particular focus on their “researcherly dispositions” (Tack & Vanderlinde, 2016), and identifies some of the implications for the professional learning of teacher educators more broadly. The Scottish data were part of a wider European wide study conducted by the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (http://info-ted.eu/), and were drawn from a survey based research (Czerniawski, Guberman and MacPhail, 2016), and follow-up in-depth interviews with university based teacher educators (MacPhail et. al., 2018). The data from 61 questionnaire respondents and 11 interviews revealed recognition of the multi-faceted nature of the role, the self-determined nature of professional learning, the need for support in becoming a teacher educator, and disparity and tensions in being research active despite an expectation, although to varying degrees, of research and scholarship being an expected activity within the professional and academic role as a teacher educator in Higher Education.