Re‐conceptualizing professional development of teacher educators in post‐Soviet Latvia

Abstract

During the first decade of post‐socialist transformation in Eastern Europe, the majority of education reform projects focused on in‐service teacher education. Governments, international agencies and non‐governmental organizations prioritized various in‐service teacher education programs to help teachers deal with rapid changes in schools. This has consequently created a gap between school teachers, who had multiple in‐service development opportunities, and pre‐service teacher educators, who were largely left out of the reform processes. Using Latvia as a case study, this article examines one of the first efforts to create professional development opportunities for a group of pre‐service teacher educators and explains how this short‐term project had contributed to re‐conceptualizing professional development for the participants involved in the initiative. Based on document analysis and in‐depth interviews with 18 teacher educators, this article: examines the motives behind ongoing, voluntary professional development experiences among pre‐service teacher educators; discusses the nature and characteristics of this unique initiative; and contextualizes the theory and practice of professional development of pre‐service teacher educators in a post‐socialist context.