Supporting Teacher Educators' Role as Researchers: The Impact of a One-Year Flemish Intervention

• In Event: Teacher Educators’ Role as Researcher: International Comparative Explorations

Abstract

Objectives
This poster aims advance insight into the impact of a one-year intervention in practitioner research designed to support teacher educators’ researcherly disposition.

Perspectives
In Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), as in many other countries, teacher educators have been rarely prepared for their vital role as educators of future teachers. Becoming a teacher educator in Flanders does not require any specific training, induction programme or further professional development. As a consequence, for most Flemish teacher educators, the ‘researcher’ role as part of their vocational practice is new (Authors under review). This poster presents the organisation of an intervention on practitioner research in Flanders designed to support teacher educators’ professional development in general, and teacher educators’ role as a researcher in particular. Underpinning this intervention is the idea that teacher educators’ professional development can be conceptualised as a transformative journey with a focus on developing a researcherly disposition (Authors, 2014; 2016).

Methods
A mixed-method intervention study with an embedded design (Creswell, 2009) was applied to study the impact of the one-year intervention on the development of teacher educators’ researcherly disposition. The ‘Teacher Educators’ Researcherly Disposition Scale’ (TERDS) (Authors, 2016) was used before, immediately after and eight months after the intervention. TERDS has four subscales (1) ‘Valuing research’, (2) ‘Being a smart consumer of research’, (3) ‘Being able to conduct research’, and (4) ‘Conducting research’. Together, these subscales allow us to quantitatively gain insight into changes of teacher educators’ self-reported researcherly disposition. Qualitative data from intake interviews, exit interviews, follow-up interviews, field notes and observations during the group sessions were used to further clarify our results.
During the intervention, 25 teacher educators conducted practitioner research in professional learning communities. The control group (n=20) continued their current teaching repertoire and took part in a delayed intervention, organised immediately after the intervention. The development of the intervention was based on important design principles of previous interventions in teacher education (Merchie et al., 2016).

Results
The quantitative results indicated positive effects at post-testing for teacher educators who participated in the intervention regarding ‘Conducting research’ and ‘Being a smart consumer of research’. The effects on ‘Being able to conduct research’ and the effects on ‘Valuing research’ revealed no statistically significant results. Eight months after participation in the intervention, the positive intervention effects (i.e. on the subscales ‘Conducting research’ and ‘Being a smart consumer of research’) were still maintained. The positive results of the quantitative analyses were also reflected in the qualitative findings. The qualitative findings also provide additional explanation and in-depth understanding of the non-significant quantitative findings. All qualitative results will be further illustrated during the poster symposium. Design guidelines will be provided for future interventions focusing on teacher educators’ professional development.

Scientific significance
This mixed method-intervention study was – to our knowledge – the first study in teacher education that has aimed to capture the impact of an intervention on teacher educators’ professional development (see Lunenberg et al., 2014).

Authors

• Hanne Tack, Ghent University

• Ruben Vanderlinde, Ghent University