University-based and school-based teacher educators

We welcome new blogs on teacher educators and teacher educator development (500-750 words). For more information see our Blog submission policy or contact your national moderator.


December 13, 2023

Teacher’s Profession is (Still) Attractive in Finland

In 2023 at the University of Helsinki, only 10% of the applicants were accepted to primary school teacher education programme and only 4% of the applicants were accepted to special education teacher education programme.
December 13, 2023

Identifying School-Based Teacher Educators’ Professional Learning Needs: An International Survey

The presumption that, if you can teach young people in schools you can therefore also teach adults how to teach and how to teach more effectively, is one that has permeated many teacher education systems and policies (Parker, Zenkov, and Glaser, 2021).
January 20, 2020

Voices of Teacher Educators: Preparing the Next Generation of Teacher Educators

As the landscape of teacher education continues to shift towards emphasizing program coherence and highly integrated clinical practice, so too does the work of teacher educators working in higher education. The emphasis on linking to the clinical context requires collaboration between school and university-based teacher educators’ to systematically and intentionally link theory, research, and practice to support teacher candidate learning. This preparation requires creating third spaces...

December 7, 2019

The team member role and ways of becoming ‘in-service’

We all want to be ‘in-service’ in qualitatively good ways. InFo-TED's conceptual model for teacher educators, shows that we pass through several phases before we are ‘in-service’. This specific part of the complex conceptual model distinguishes the phases of career-long learning as follows...

From the ‘pre-initial’ phase, just recruited and on the doorstep of becoming a teacher educator, one moves to the ‘initial phase’. After maybe one to two years the next...

July 1, 2019

Challenges in practice experienced by school- and university-based teacher educators

Teacher educators have been working in partnerships between schools and higher education institutions, to provide initial teacher education, for many years. The context for these partnerships is evolving due to external expectations, government-driven initiatives and developments within the profession. The increased focus on school-based teacher education resulted in changes in partnership structure.
May 11, 2019

University-based teacher educators seen through the eyes of school-based teacher educators

Student teachers often complain about lack of communication between representatives from the different disciplines included in teacher education (Smith, 2015, 2016). In a recent study, a group of school-based teacher educators (mentors) with and without mentor education are interviewed focusing on university-based teacher educators’ (tutors’) competences and responsibilities (Helleve & Ulvik, 2019).
October 1, 2018

Interrogating Professionalism

Teacher educators frequently invoke the concept of ‘professionalism’ in their work with students. It is usually presented as an unqualified good, a set of values that aspiring teachers should aim to achieve. In some countries (e.g. Scotland), suites of ‘professional’ standards appropriate to different career stages have been developed, as well as a code of ‘professional’ conduct (see GTCS, 2018).
January 15, 2018

Adolescence psychology in school-based teacher education

In The Netherlands, workplace learning consists of 40% of initial teacher education. The main activities in workplace learning are the training of teaching skills and assignments for the teacher education institution and school.
August 24, 2017

Secondary (11-19) and specialist teacher identity in England

This report summarises some thinking which arises out of doctoral studies into music teacher biography (Dalladay, 2014) which has potential implications for other subject areas and which was first put forward at a recent conference...