Becoming a teacher educator: evidence from the field

Abstract

This article makes a contribution to understanding the challenges new teacher educators face in establishing their professional identities in Higher Education. The data collected for the study allowed the researchers to analyse the tensions and conflicts arising for 28 teacher educators in their first 3 years of working on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses in England. The findings of the study show that, despite having previous successful careers in school teaching, the majority of the interviewees took between 2 and 3 years to establish their new professional identities. They faced challenges in two key areas—developing a pedagogy for HE-based ITE work and becoming research active. Meeting both of these challenges required significant adaptations to their previous identities as schoolteachers.