Visions

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.


March 5, 2021

Fit to teach?

As a teacher educator of 13 years of experience, I have learned a great deal since Covid-19 took its grip on the UK in March 2020, with the pandemic providing me with time to reflect on and review my previous and current practice (Bain et al 2002).The personal and professional became inextricably intertwined, prompting me to engage with my practice in more depth. I am a teacher educator, a parent, an assessor, and a former school teacher. These roles once separate, have become interwoven, leading me to look at my engagement in the teacher educator landscape through a different lens.

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

Educating teachers for innovative education: Every day is different, every school is different

As a 19-year-old girl, I used to work at a bank during summer holidays. For three weeks I was a desk staff member and I helped customers with foreign currencies, to place funds and make cash withdrawals. At that time there were no cash machines yet. The job I experienced was not at all exciting. At the beginning of the day, I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew which forms I had to hand in at the end of the day to be sent to the head office. It did not take me long to realize I did not have any aspiration to work as a bank employee.

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.
September 11, 2018

Views on teacher education

A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a research review on the pedagogy of teacher education for the International Handbook of teacher education (Korthagen, 2016). It made me realize how overwhelming and scattered the literature in this field is, because many different views exist on ways to educate teachers. It made me realize how overwhelming and scattered...

July 25, 2018

Affected by teacher education

As teacher educator, educating secondary school teachers in Norway I often visit student teachers in their field practice. The last decade I have experienced an increased focus on measurable outcomes and the cognitive dimension of learning in schools. The teaching seems predictable. It feeds young people’s thinking, but does not ‘reach their heart or touch their soul’ (Biesta, 2017, p. 418).