Shaping Australian teacher education: Teacher educators’ AARE research interests

Abstract

Turney and Wright (1990) argue that Australian teacher educators, because of their demographic characteristics (predominantly male, locally born of British background, urban orientation), have difficulty in (i) modelling appropriate teacher behaviour for their mainly female clientele; (ii) exemplifying principles of non-sexist and multicultural education; and (iii) adequately preparing teachers to work in rural schools. Teacher educators’ work does not merely consist in face-to-face teaching. Another important aspect of the work of teacher educators is research. Research is the means by which teacher educators produce useful knowledge and may be an important means of overcoming the determining effects of demographic characteristics. It is interesting therefore to examine the research endeavour of teacher educators through a content analysis of AARE Annual Conference (1991) abstracts to assess the extent to which teacher educators focus their research on issues relevant to (i), (ii) and (iii). As it turns out, research in these areas is sub-optimal.