Professional development activities of teacher educators

As all professionals, teacher educators are expected to develop themselves continuously during their working life in order to keep their knowledge and skills up to date. Smith (2003, p203) distinguishes three reasons for teacher educators to develop themselves: 1) to improve the profession (teacher education); 2) to maintain interest in the profession, to grow personally and professionally and 3) to advance within the profession, promotion. At the teacher education institute of the Fontys University of Applied Science, teacher educators are stimulated by the management to spend 10-15% of their working hours on professional development. Do teacher educators spend these hours and if they dos so, what purpose do they have in mind? What activities do they undertake to develop themselves? What topics do they choose for professional development? Are there differences between more experienced teacher educators and beginning teacher educators? To study these questions, a questionnaire was held by all 228 teacher educators working at the Fontys teacher education institute. At this institute, about 4000 student-teachers are educated to become a teacher in secondary or vocational education. First impressions of the results show that 33% of the teacher educators spend 10-15% of their time on professional development. A large group of teacher educators (42%) spends less then 10% and a small group (23%) spends more then 15% of their time on professional development. The main reason for teacher educators to professionalize themselves is to improve the quality of their teaching to students. This refers to the second reason Smith (2003) mentions. Improving the profession or advance within the profession (reason 1 and 3 in Smith's list) were much less often mentioned. The four activities most mentioned by teacher educators to develop themselves were reading of (scientific) literature (1), followed by collegial consultation (2), attending conferences or meetings (3) and trying out new approaches and systematically evaluating them (4). The topics teacher educators develop themselves in vary from didactical subjects to coaching skills, subject-specific topics and ICT-skills. Further analysis to reveal whether there are differences between experienced and beginning teachers is still in progress, but will be available at the conference in August 2011. References: Smith, K (2003). So, what about the professional development of teacher educators? European Journal of Teacher Education, Vol 26, No2, pp201-21