Social change

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.


August 28, 2023

Sleeping Beauty and the future of (teacher) education

What if you fell asleep and wake up one hundred years from now? How do you think education smells in 2123? Which metaphor would best represent the teacher-student relationship we see? Which animal do you hope runs the school premises? Sixty educational professionals working in all areas of the educational field
February 1, 2022

Long-COVID-19 – The need to (re-)research about teacher educators’ professional learning needs

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged us to rethink about the long-lasting implications for teacher education and how the traditional approaches to educate teacher candidates have evolved. This unexpected scenario has become a living laboratory for teacher educators who have had to transfer to solely relying...

October 13, 2020

Teachers as teacher educators in the post-COVID world

It has been a decade since the highly influential report Teaching Scotland’s Future, also known as the Donaldson Report, was published. This document set out a blueprint for developing teacher education in Scotland. I know this report well, because I read it cover to cover, in preparation for my current job in Teacher Education. The interview presentation asked me to consider the recommendation: “All teachers should see themselves as teacher educators...”

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 3)

On March 12th, 2020, the HEIs closed. As work moved from our educational institutions, complete with offices, corridors, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and staff rooms, to our homes, we also moved from the physical world to the virtual world of work. In designing these new...

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 2)

Our identities have changed somewhat as a result of the many changes to our professional routines, norms and practices coupled with changes and adjustments in our personal routines. Our omni-presence at home means we ‘wear many...

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 1)

As a teacher educator and Assistant Dean Research I believe it is incumbent on me to examine, suggest and explore initiatives amongst teacher educator colleagues in helping in identifying and initiating how best to consider ‘spaces’ where teacher education colleagues can harness...

March 5, 2020

Teacher educators as committed professionals

In August 2018 Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg staged a protest outside the Riksdag, holding a sign "Skolstrejk för klimatet". This was the spark to an international movement of pupils who take time off from class to demonstrate and demand political action to prevent further climate change. In 2019 this movement reached Belgium: between February and May pupils went on strike and demonstrated in Brussels and other major towns. At first these weekly demonstrations stimulated the debate on climate change and the growing political awareness of a new generation. The ‘climate truants’...

May 19, 2019

Student Teachers Working With and in Communities

In the Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education at Maynooth University our work in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is guided by the philosophy of the German pedagogue, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and by the principles of equality, inclusiveness and social justice in Maynooth University. These principles very much align with the InFo-TED Teacher Educator as an agent of (social) change category. Gaining professional experience in a variety of placement settings is a common feature of ITE programmes.
April 27, 2019

Reorienting Teacher Educators Towards Sustainability

On the 24th January 2019 a young sixteen year old schoolgirl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, addressed attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She said to them “Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no-one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people, … have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.