What professional learning and development do school-based teacher educators need?

There is an assumption by some who do not have direct experience of initial teacher education that any teacher can be a teacher educator, and that induction and professional development are not essential. However, the complexity of the role and the range of knowledge, skills and attitudes that it encompasses differ from the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed as a classroom teacher. In fact, being a teacher educator is a separate profession to that of teacher, with the need to develop a different professional identity, professional knowledge (including knowledge of how teachers develop; the wider school context and recent research in education and for developing subject knowledge for teaching) and a range of professional skills (including pedagogies for working with adults).

With the current policy-driven increase in school-led routes into teaching in England, experienced teachers are taking on more responsibility for teacher education whilst remaining in their school as teachers, rather than entering the higher education sector to become higher education-based teacher educators. As the work of teacher educators is vital in ensuring high quality teacher education, and thereby enhancing learning in schools, the professional learning and development of this emerging group of school-based teacher educators must be given our attention. Valuable time will need to be prioritized for engagement with appropriate professional learning and development opportunities, along with being released from the urgency of schooling matters. This will be essential for school-based provision of initial teacher education to be sustainable.

There are a growing number of studies on the professional learning of higher education-based teacher educators, but very little research on being a practising school teacher whilst additionally taking on the role of teacher educator. School-based teacher educators are involved in the preparation, leading and evaluation of many activities for student teachers, for example:

– mentoring and guidance
– planning learning opportunities such as observations and team teaching
– the coordination of the professional learning
– leading academic input
– overseeing quality of school-based teacher education
– maintaining links with universities and school-centered initial teacher training providers (SCITTs)

School-based educators are likely to be a heterogeneous group of teachers with varying lengths of classroom experience and a variety of levels of academic qualifications which will lead to different professional learning and development needs. There may be some commonalities with the professional learning needs of their higher education-based colleagues including fostering an understanding that modelling needs to be made explicit to student teachers (White, 2013). There is also the challenge of developing an identity as a teacher educator in the context where the school-based person already holds a strong identity as a teacher. This is important, because having a secure professional identity enables the teacher educator to be more articulate about good practice and effective in their role. It is possible that school-based staff may develop their identity with the student teachers in their school context (situational identity) more rapidly than they develop their core beliefs about teacher education, which requires wider contact with emerging ideas and relationships with more experienced teacher educators (substantive identity). This imbalance could lead to the impoverishment of teacher education.

How can we nurture teachers taking on this additional role as they develop their new identity, knowledge and skills as teacher educators whilst not being situated geographically within a local community of practice? We need to create opportunities to work alongside more experienced teacher educators, observing and planning together, building relationships through networking, conferences, mentoring and postgraduate study. Spending time reading, writing and researching together in professional learning communities. The professional learning of higher education-based teacher educators has been somewhat ad hoc, but collaborative inquiry groups and the sharing of self-study research have played a significant part (Kosnik et al, 2015). How much more rich these communities would be with both these groups collaborating together, benefitting from their complementary strengths. Higher education-based educators are in a good position to offer critical friendship for school-based colleagues around programme development and pedagogical practice, whilst school-based educators can offer a critical voice to challenge the literature from their personal experiences of practice. Is this the time for a more formal professional learning community of all teacher educators across England, and can IPDA England be that community for us?

References

KOSNIK, C., MIYATA, C., CLEOVOULOU, Y., FLETCHER, T. & MENNA, L. 2015. The education of teacher 

educators. In: T, F. (ed.) Handbook of Canadian research in initial teacher education. Ottawa, ON: 

Canadian Association for Teacher Education.

WHITE, E. 2013. Exploring the professional development needs of new teacher educators situated solely in school: pedagogical knowledge and professional identity. Professional Development in Education, 39, 82-98.

Authors

Elizabeth White and Claire Dickerson, University of Hertfordshire

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