The Development of the Identity and Knowledge Base of Teacher Educators

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Transformation in Teacher Education

Abstract

Based on a socio-historical perspective, the professional identity of teachers and teacher educators develops within historical and cultural worlds and changes constantly as a result of transformation of (teacher) education. From the start of teacher education (in most countries around 1800), teacher educators regarded themselves as expert teachers and/or subject content experts. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the first half of the twentieth century, the main educational goal of national governments was to improve public education. All efforts were geared towards the development of academic and professional knowledge for teachers (including the teachers in teacher education) on all levels of education and for the enhancement of the quality of student teachers.
With the increasing complexity of teaching after the second world war (Hargreaves, 2000), teacher education developed into professional education for the preparation of school teachers. The gap between schools and teacher education widened and this resulted in the move of teacher education into Higher Education and the teachers of teachers becoming lecturers in Higher Education. They were increasingly identified by policy makers and researchers as a distinct professional group within education and began to be called – and increasingly call themselves – teacher educators (European Commission, 2013).
As part of this development there was growing interest in a knowledge-base for teacher educators that is distinct from the knowledge requisite for teachers and traditional educational scholars. This knowledge base has a focus on themes that are specific for the work of teacher education, such as mentoring and the pedagogy of teacher education. The general term ‘knowledge base‘ is used to indicate academic and professional publications that were written for, about and by teacher educators in the Netherlands from 1950 to 2010. Based on the analysis of primary and secondary policy documents and academic and professional publications this paper describes the development of the identity of teacher educators and their growing knowledge base from 1950 to 2010 a knowledge.
After 1950 the first documents for teacher educators that aimed at the enhancement of the work of their work as teacher educators were published by researchers and experts at national professional development institutes. It took until the last decades of the 20th century before the first articles about teacher educators as a specific professional group emerged. Over the last two decades teacher educators themselves are involved in academic and practice based research and now contribute to the knowledge base of their profession. By doing this, they extended and are still extending their traditional identities as teacher, lecturer and teacher educator with that of researcher.

Authors

• Anja Swennen, VU University Amsterdam

• Monique L. Volman, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Research Institute Child Development and Education