Research on teacher educators’ teacher identities: critical interpretative synthesis and future directions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research has suggested that teacher educators’ profession and the process of identity formation are poorly understood. Moreover, attempts to clarify the terminology are rare. While research has addressed teacher educators’ professional identities holistically, discussion on teacher educators’ teacher identities is very rare, even though these specific sub-identities are at the core of their work. In this study we apply meta-ethnography to provide an interpretive synthesis of 30 studies on teacher educators’ identities conducted in the past decade. Our findings display how teacher educators’ teacher identities are understood in the current literature suggesting teacher identity to be a hidden term in research on teacher educators. Moreover, we provide a critique, challenging prevalent understandings of teacher educators’ identities, particularly focusing on the terminology used in the studies and definitions of teacher educators’ teacher identities and conclude with future directions for the research in this domain.