Teacher Educator Professional Inquiry in an Age of Accountability

‘Teacher Educators’ are teachers of teachers and may typically be based within
schools or within university departments. In this chapter we argue that all teacher
educators should adopt ‘inquiry as stance’ and should be actively engaged in
ongoing professional inquiry or practitioner research. Within a team delivering
initial teacher education programmes we argue that there needs to be a range of
expertise but with all teacher educators active in professional inquiry. We define
professional inquiry as distinct from pragmatic evaluation which is everyday quality
assurance procedures. Beyond that we propose that at least some members
of a teacher educator team should be engaged in on-going classroom practice
whilst others need to be engaged in practitioner research. The content of teacher
education programmes needs to include critical engagement with cutting edge
research evidence and with learning theory as well as enactment, experimentation
and evaluation of core practices in classrooms. Teacher education, both initial and
advanced, needs to equip teachers with the essential skills and knowledge of
educational research literacy so that they have the professional tools required to
contribute to curriculum development and develop research-informed practice.
Teacher educators based in schools and universities need to model professional
inquiry and practitioner research.