Developing as a Teacher Educator: A Guide to Establishing Identity, Exploring Pedagogy, and Navigating Policy

It is commonly understood that teacher educators help develop teachers. It is less commonly understood how teacher educators come to develop as teacher educators themselves. Who and what develops the teacher educator? We know that teacher education does not exist apart from the teacher educator, yet too often teacher educator development becomes an afterthought in our teacher education discourse. This book examines this key group’s development through historical and contemporary contexts using conceptual, theoretical, and pedagogical considerations. Understanding the complex work associated with the roles and responsibilities of being a teacher educator, the contributors to this text include experts in varying teacher educator development experiences and settings. We use the term guide in the title to connote that there is no prescription for learning how to be a teacher educator. Rather, we hope this text offers a survey for teacher educators as they journey down the path of teacher educator development as a teacher of and with teachers. The text addresses such areas as the history and politics of teacher education, evolving technologies affecting teacher education, teacher educator pedagogies, teacher educator identity re/formation, program design and partnerships, and teacher education leadership. The chapters straddle research and practice by being firmly grounded in the extant literature while also incorporating the authors’ experiences in teacher educator development.