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Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy

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On becoming a teacher educator

John Loughran
a a

Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia Version of record first published: 15 Jul 2011

To cite this article: John Loughran (2011): On becoming a teacher educator, Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, 37:3, 279-291 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2011.588016

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Journal of Education for TeachingAquatic Insects Vol. 37, No. 3, August 2011, 279291

On becoming a teacher educator

John Loughran*
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia (Received 11 July 2010; nal version received 17 January 2011) This paper is designed to offer an Australian perspective on the nature of teacher educators work based on the observations and experiences of the author, who has been involved in the eld for the past two decades. In so doing, the paper is designed not only to offer insights into how teacher education in Australia has been challenged and shaped in recent times, but also to begin to illustrate how the nature of teacher educators work simultaneously shapes their identity.
Keywords: teacher educator; teaching about teaching; teacher educator identity;

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pedagogy of teacher education; teacher education

Background One of the major problems associated with teacher education is caught up in supercial and/or simplistic views of teaching and learning. Such views inevitably impact understandings of teacher education, the place where expertise in teaching about teaching should reside. Despite the rhetoric about teaching being complex and sophisticated, many observers of teaching see it very differently. There is a public view of teaching as the transmission of information. Even the research literature is strewn with studies that bemoan transmissive modes of teaching. Students experiences of teaching and learning are shaped by what Lortie (1975) described as the apprenticeship of observation. As a consequence of that apprenticeship, it is not hard to see why views of teaching as telling and learning as listening may become embedded in a students psyche. Supercial understandings of teaching are also exacerbated through such things as high stakes testing and approaches to teaching standards which, because of the implicit need for simple solutions to complex situations, again reinforce ingrained views of practice as the delivery of information. Therefore, across the public generally (and perhaps even within the teaching profession at times), a supercial understanding of the nature of teaching inuences the expectations for, and outcomes of, practice, thus:
one of the hallmarks of the current age is the tendency to propose simple, commonsense solutions to what are in fact complex, multidimensional and often situational problems . . . Efciency is the clarion cry with a plethora of edicts emerging from government regarding standards and measures of performance. Thus, decisions

*Email: john.loughran@monash.edu
ISSN 0260-7476 print/ISSN 1360-0540 online 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2011.588016 http://www.informaworld.com

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regarding the ways in which teachers may exercise their professional judgment in response to increasingly complex problems are constrained by increasingly simplistic solutions. (Groundwater-Smith and Mockler 2009, 138)

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One way of thinking about how to respond in a meaningful way to supercial views of the nature of teaching is embedded in Sarasons (1996) argument that schoolteachers [need to] accept the obligation as a group to develop . . . a forum that acknowledges [the] world of ideas, theor[ies], research and practice[s] about which they should be knowledgeable (369). By extension, Sarasons argument equally applies to the world of teacher education. In the world of teacher education, ideas, theories, research and practices are fundamental to the development of teacher educators professional knowledge, not least because how teacher educators view their role inuences not only what they do, but also how they do it. On the one hand, if teaching about teaching is perceived to be heavily embedded in practice such that passing on the tips and tricks of teaching is paramount then, by default, that approach can too easily be viewed as the major role of teacher education. From that perspective, it is not difcult to see how the need to be recognised as an expert practitioner can therefore prevail as a dening image and be very inuential in terms of shaping a teacher educator s identity. On the other hand, the archetypal image of an academic as a theoretician can be equally powerful in shaping a teacher educators approach to, and perceptions of, their identity. (For some, these two alternative perspectives are inherent in that which has been described as the theorypractice gap; an abiding issue in teacher education.) These varying perspectives on the nature of teaching and teacher education inuence the ways in which teacher educators work is conceptualised and understood; from both inside and outside the profession. In fact, it could be argued that teacher education has struggled to demonstrate that teaching and learning are complex processes and that teaching about teaching requires specialist knowledge, skills and abilities that have not typically been well articulated:
The status of teacher education within higher education has long been recognised as uneasy and given a sometimes marginal status. In some countries the eld of teacher education has been measured against traditional academic disciplines and found wanting. These struggles for legitimacy have occurred in part because the knowledge base of teacher education is what Furlong (1996, p. 154) calls the endemic uncertainty of professional knowledge. (Murray, Swennen, and Shagir 2009, 31)

A different way of thinking about the work of teacher education is through the ways in which knowledge and practice of teaching about teaching is developed and rened. That knowledge and practice has been described by some as a pedagogy of teacher education (Korthagen et al. 2001; Loughran 2006). By looking into teacher education through the lens of a pedagogy of teacher education, the expectations for teacher education become much more than the two extremes noted above. Rather, the knowledge, skills and abilities of teacher educators become central to what is done, how and why. Hence, a professional identity that places expertise in teaching and learning about teaching at the heart of scholarship comes to the fore. In so doing, that which teacher education has experienced as an intense political debate . . . [in which] policy makers do not give much attention to teacher educators as a distinct professional group (Swennen and van der Klink 2009, 1) is more likely to be positively addressed.

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This paper explores how the changes in teacher education in Australia have shaped understandings and expectations of the work of teacher educators and therefore inuenced their identity as a professional group. As teacher education is now rmly situated in the university sector, the value of a pedagogy of teacher education as a way of conceptualising knowledge and practice of teaching about teaching and therefore shaping what it means to be a teacher education scholar, offers a new way of looking into the world and work of teacher education. The following section offers a brief overview of the changes in teacher education programme structures and offerings over the past two decades. The Australian context Teacher education in Australia has seen substantial change in the past 20 years. Until the late 1980s, primary teacher education and some secondary teacher education occurred in teachers colleges, while the postgraduate diploma in education (a post-degree one-year teaching qualication, most commonly the qualication for secondary teachers) was generally offered by universities. The vast majority of teachers colleges were government institutions that offered a three-year Diploma of Teaching as the common initial teaching qualication. In addition to teachers colleges there were colleges of advanced education (CAEs). CAEs offered four-year Bachelor of Education degrees and were also involved in conducting upgrading programmes for Diplomas of Teaching as the bachelor degree became a more acceptable minimum qualication for initial teaching. In 1989, the Australian Federal Government abolished the binary higher education system and consolidated the tertiary education sector, with teachers colleges and CAEs being incorporated into universities (Dawkins 1988). Bachelor degrees requiring three years of full-time undergraduate study as a minimum initial teacher education qualication were phased out by the late 1990s and a four-year qualication became the accepted model for teacher preparation programmes. Therefore, from the early 1990s teacher education became wholly university based, with programmes being either a bachelor degree or a postgraduate teaching qualication. Undergraduate degrees of four years duration could be either a single Bachelor of Education (often the case in preparation for being a primary school teacher) or a combined double degree (e.g. BSc/BEd, BA/BEd has become increasingly common for both primary and secondary teacher preparation). The postgraduate qualication of a one-year end-on Graduate Diploma of Education is the most common end-on qualication. However, in recent times, the two-year Master of Teaching has been developing momentum, with a number of universities offering it as an initial teacher education postgraduate qualication. In general, teacher education pre-service qualications require a minimum of four years (although some states have expectations of ve years). All qualications are offered in the majority of universities across Australia whether they be deemed research-intensive or teaching-intensive institutions (for a full listing see Australian Universities 2010). With teacher education fully embedded in the university sector, the nature of the work of teacher education has, by necessity, become much more responsive to the requirements and expectations of the university sector. Being within the university sector has inevitably impacted that which is done in teacher education and the ways in which scholarship in teacher education is interpreted and judged. As a consequence, that which might be described as an Australian teacher educator

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identity has been challenged, buffeted and shaped in a range of ways over the past 20 years. Issues in teacher education There have been numerous reports (both state and national) into teaching and teacher education in Australia that stretch back decades. In the majority of cases, the issues, ideas and recommendations associated with those reports have attracted very little follow-up. One reason for this lack of action could well be associated with the fact that views of teaching and teacher education as complex tend to be at odds with everyday views of teaching as the delivery of information (linked to views briey outlined at the start of this paper). As a consequence, teacher education as training in preparation for doing teaching tends to dominate political debates and so a search for the right training package persists whenever the purpose and expectations of teacher preparation are canvassed in the mass media. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training Report, Top of the class (Teacher Education Inquiry 2007) drew attention to the sense of frustration in the educational community arising from issues that repeatedly appear across the large number of inquiries that have not been taken up or [have] not been implemented (2). Typically, submissions expressed concerns about the level of funding for teacher education . . . [being] inadequate and . . . having serious consequences for teacher education (108). As teacher education programmes include both university-based studies and school-based practicum experiences, the costs associated with striving for quality in learning about teaching in both sites are inuenced by the needs and requirements of each. At the university, the predominant model of lectures and tutorials is encouraged by a cost structure that strives for efciencies through delivery en masse, while at schools, the individual supervisor/student teacher approach is based on learning of a different, more personal and intensive nature. When combined in what Korthagen et al. (2001) described as the traditional teacher education programme structure, contradictory messages are conveyed about the nature of teaching and learning about teaching. In essence, economic imperatives run counter to the hopes and expectations of teaching for quality learning on a large scale. Hence, the oft-bemoaned theorypractice gap persists and creates a distraction based on the use of binaries that mask the real issues associated with the complexity of teaching and learning about teaching; a distraction that is at the heart of the work of teacher educators and the nature of their identity. As this section briey illustrates, teacher education in Australia has emerged from a period of transition as it has become fully integrated into the university sector. With that transition come expectations about what it means to be a fully functioning member of the academy. One outcome of the integration into the academy involves what might be described as the pathway to becoming a teacher educator. The remainder of the paper pursues this issue in detail. Method This paper applies the methodological approach developed by Kitchen (2005) through his conceptual framing of relational teacher education. Kitchen used a self-study methodology to examine his narrative of his developing practice as a

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teacher educator by looking backward (across selected artefacts of his practice) in order to move forward, and in so doing learnt how to articulate his understanding of being a teacher educator. The data on which this paper is based revolve around critical incidents highlighted in a recent public biographical account of learning about becoming a teacher educator resulting from a review of a number of teaching and teacher education publications with which the author has been associated over the past 15 years. Just as Cochran-Smith et al. (2008) used this approach to inquire into the nature and learning of teacher education through a re-examination of artefacts (in their case, specic texts) which acted as critical incidents for authors of the Handbook of research on teacher education, so too this paper does the same. However, the artefacts themselves are not the particular focus of this study; rather it is the learning that emerged as a consequence of that review. Hence, as a form of deskbound document review, this study adopts a methodological intention toward data collection and knowledge production that could be described as being in accord with that which Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) noted as aiming to provoke, challenge, and illuminate rather than conrm and settle (20). Importantly, the notion of trustworthiness (Lincoln and Guba 1985) then applies to this study in terms of how well the resultant learnings resonate (or not) with the reader. Becoming a teacher educator For many teacher educators in Australia, the traditional path into academia has (until recently) followed the familiar route of school teacher to teacher educator (Berry 2007; Brandenburg 2008; Hoban 1997; Wood and Borg 2010) commonly reported by many others internationally (Bullock 2009; Bullough 1997; Guilfoyle et al. 1995). In that transition it is well recognised that:
. . . ones professional identity as a teacher educator is constructed over time. Developing an identity and a set of successful practices in teacher education is best understood as a process of becoming. Although the work of teaching has much in common with the work of teacher education, the two positions are signicantly different in important ways. (Dinkleman, Margolis, and Sikkenga 2006, 6)

That difference between the work of teaching and teacher education is well illustrated in Ritter s (2009) self-study that formed the basis of a developing understanding of his vision for teacher education. Through his research, Ritter came to see that the commonly-held assumption that, for former classroom teachers, learning to teach student teachers is a self-evident process (59) differed dramatically from the reality of his learning to be a teacher educator. His study made clear that becoming a teacher educator was based on a continual process of learning about teaching through sustained inquiry into practice. Just as Ritter analysed a number of critical incidents that shaped his learning about teaching about teaching, so too this paper highlights the results of a similar process of learning about teaching about teaching encapsulated in the following themes. Doing more than teaching: the place of reection From an organisational perspective, the allocation of time to do the work of teaching is a top priority for the running of a school. Therefore, the major focus of the

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work of a school teacher is teaching. In universities, the organisational imperatives are different. Academics are expected to do more than teach. They are also expected to research and, through that research, to develop new knowledge to be disseminated, critiqued, further developed and rened; hence the importance of conferences and publications as a cornerstone to that process. In making the transition from school teacher to teacher educator and, partly as a consequence of the status of teacher education in the academy, the change in expectations of the two workplaces is not always made clear to the neophyte teacher educator. As a consequence, beginning teacher educators may well nd themselves accepting high teaching loads (often explained away as a result of being positioned as good teachers) and inadvertently limiting their academic development and subsequent career prospects. Without appropriate induction into the academy, this may also lead to a form of exploitation that leads to ingrained work habits based largely around high teaching loads that ultimately reinforce a view of teacher education as lower status academic work. Although teaching is important, and good teaching is crucial, the shift from only teaching to teaching and research as expectations of academic work, is central to identity formation for a teacher educator. Part of that shift involves understanding that teaching about teaching must be informed by knowledge of practice that goes beyond the recounting of ones own school teaching experiences or being limited to the passing on of tips and tricks about teaching; it is about moving beyond a view of teaching solely as doing. In many ways then, there is a need for teacher educators to be credible researchers of teaching so that their knowledge of practice can also inform their own practice and the ways in which that interacts with their students learning about teaching. In so doing, a conceptualisation of teaching about teaching must go way beyond doing teaching and begin to embrace the world of ideas, theories, research and practice that matter in shaping a pedagogy of teacher education. One element of that world of ideas, theories, research and practice involves the notion of reection. As a school teacher, initial contact with Deweys (1933) How we think (and much of the literature that followed his work in the eld of reection) can be challenging. What reection means, how it is conceptualised and the manner of its application in practice can appear overly theoretical in comparison to an everyday understanding of reection which is often seen as looking back over a situation, or in the case of teaching, a concentration on planning and review. However, from a teacher educator s perspective, the notion of reection needs to be more critically examined and embraced, not as a training tool but as a way of delving into Furlongs (1996) endemic uncertainty of professional knowledge. It is by learning through reection that teaching about teaching can be informed and that teacher education itself can be seen as moving beyond a technicalrational or training approach to teacher education. Moving beyond teaching as doing is a crucial aspect of understanding the complexity of teaching and learning about teaching. Thus, through a more nuanced understanding of reection, the ability to frame and reframe situations may well be a learning outcome that invites opportunities for inquiry into aspects of practice that once went unquestioned. As a consequence, the purpose and value of reection (both practically and conceptually) are likely to shift in ways that will inuence how a teacher educator identies with, and into, practice. Through that shift, a

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teacher educator may well experience a gentle reshaping of identity; the place of teaching as doing may diminish as knowledge of practice assumes more importance. Importantly, that reshaping of identity will be driven by the learning resulting from a deeper examination of practice catalysed by deeper understandings of the nature of reection. Inquiring into practice: the place of research One of the enduring issues for teachers is that researching practice is an additional extra on top of their existing teaching commitments. Therefore, the degree to which teacher research has been able to penetrate the life of teachers has been quite limited despite the value placed on teacher research over a considerable period by supporters such as Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1990, 2009). However, with research as an explicit aspect of the work of academics, it would seem that researching practice could (or should) be more common in the work of teacher educators; especially as knowledge of teaching is at the heart of the perceived expertise of teacher educators. The eld of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) (e.g. Hamilton et al. 1998), with its focus on teacher educators as researchers of their own practice, has raised the stakes in relation to research. S-STEP has created new opportunities for teacher educators to question what research is and how it should be done because of this focus on practitioner inquiry. Cochran-Smith and Lytle describe approaching practitioner research from a position of inquiry as stance, which raises an important issue. Inquiring into practice carries different connotations (and expectations) when teaching is understood as being problematic and when inquiry is into ones own practice, thus raising questions about the purpose underpinning inquiry. When adopting a self-study methodology it is almost inevitable that the research will impact the researcher s (teacher educator s) identity because the major purpose of inquiry is to inform ones own practice. Moreover, it is the inuence of purpose that frames S-STEP and helps to explain its continued attraction to teacher educators since its inception in the early 1990s. Self-study is initially rooted in an individuals concerns for, and issues in, teaching about teaching, so the crucible of practice is the site for inquiry. Making the problematic aspects of practice an overt aspect of teaching and learning about teaching then begins to illustrate for student teachers how researching ones own practice is a serious source of knowledge about teaching. In so doing, the nature of teaching and teacher education is able to be challenged in new and unexpected ways because the research outcomes continually feed back into the practice setting; demanding a pedagogic response. Learning through such challenges is clearly evident in the collaborative self-studies of many teacher educators. One case in point is in the work of a teacher educator, Amanda Berry. Berry developed new understandings not only of what she did, how and why as a teacher educator, but also in terms of the sophisticated insights into knowledge development as a consequence of her concerted inquiries into her collaborative practices. Her learning about being a teacher educator is demonstrated time and again through a range of self-studies over time, all of which illustrate a gradual rening of her identity as a teacher educator. Aspects of those shifts are evident in the way she recognised (and responded to) varying conceptions of her role as a teacher educator from that which Clandinin (1995) described as the sacred story to something very different (Table 1). It is not difcult to see how her learning

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Table 1. Shifts in conceptualising teaching about teaching.

Sacred story conceptualisation of teaching about teaching The view of knowledge

Some issues important to understanding teaching about teaching

Alternative conceptualisation of teaching about teaching Knowledge about teaching is viewed as uncertain, messy, problematic Knowledge about teaching is developed through (shared) personal experience and reection; it involves theorising experience Knowledge is located inside and outside the knower constructed knowledge

Knowledge about teaching is viewed as certain, predictable, unproblematic Knowledge about teaching is delivered via recipes about teaching which leads to straightforward acquisition of technical expertise Knowledge is located outside the knower received wisdom The way in which knowledge about teaching is acquired The location of knowledge about teaching The view of teacher educators expertise What is made explicit about teaching? How the approach is viewed

Expertise is viewed in terms of smoothness of delivery, concealing the problematic nature of practice

The what and how (technical rational) aspects matter most, not the why (pedagogical reasoning. Pedagogical reasoning may be part of the story but not the most important part Tends to be safeguarded by tradition and thereby perpetuated

Expertise is revealed through ways in which uncertain and problematic nature of teaching and learning is made explicit to others What, how and why are made explicit, as well as the associated feelings. Previously unseen elements of the story Confronts and challenges because it is new and different

Source: Berry and Loughran (2004).

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about being a teacher educator shaped her identity; it stands out strongly in her book Tensions in teaching about teaching: A self-study of the development of myself as a teacher educator (Berry 2007). In essence, Berrys understanding of how teaching might be interpreted and taught in teacher education was fundamentally challenged because she engaged in researching her own practice. As a consequence, her knowledge and expertise as a teacher educator grew because she embodied inquiry as stance, which subsequently impacted her identity. The nature of her work, her approach to research and practice, its impact in her institution and the profession itself brought to the fore her identity as a teacher education scholar. Needless to say, an identity as a teacher education scholar is fundamentally different from that of a teacher teaching in a teacher education programme. Through researching ones own practice, other inuences on a teacher educators identity begin to emerge. The well-recognised tacit dimension of knowledge is one aspect of practice that draws attention to features of teaching and learning about teaching that impact understandings of what it means to be a teacher educator. If knowledge of practice remains tacit it can mask the importance of paying serious attention to purpose in teaching, which can have a number of consequences. One consequence revolves around the tendency (sometimes reinforced through teacher education programmes) to confuse the accumulation of teaching procedures and activities with expertise in teaching. Even among experienced teachers, the view that Appleton (2002) described as a search for activities the work can dominate ideas about expertise. Therefore, a teacher educator must be able to see beyond the tacit to that which can (and must) be made explicit, otherwise the search for activities that work can dominate the learning-to-teach landscape. Explicating pedagogical purposes in a teacher educator s practice matters because of student teachers competing needs and so also inuences understandings of identity. Student teachers, for all manner of well-documented reasons, initially seek to accumulate a repertoire of teaching tips and tricks to help them to manage their transition from student to teacher. Unfortunately, in that transition, they are often confronted by the stark distinction between their university- and school-based experiences. They often perceive of their teacher educators as being immersed in a world of theory and their school teacher colleagues as living in the world of practice. Dinkleman, Margolis, and Sikkenga (2006) described that situation when they stated that: . . . teachers are skeptics who must be convinced that the ivory tower university talking head has something worth communicating . . . this was true for both the student teachers . . . and the cooperating teachers they worked with in schools (121). What that scepticism can mean in terms of shaping a teacher educators identity is that the specialist knowledge, skills and abilities that should come to the fore when creating the conditions for student teachers to learn about teaching may be underutilised. Therefore, what emerges as an issue for teacher educators in terms of their perception of their identity (in comparison to those outside teacher education who may frame their identity differently), is that if knowledge of practice remains tacit, the why of practice (the fundamental pedagogical underpinnings inherent in supporting meaningful learning) is diminished; or worse, dismissed. As a consequence, although student teachers should have opportunities to experience what it means to develop well-reasoned, thoughtfully structured and expertly implemented teaching and to see such reasoning as a key component to unlocking the essence of

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knowledge of practice, they may unwittingly be encouraged to shun such framing in their pursuit of activities that work. In so doing, a teacher educators identity may be further challenged because seeing expertise as something that extends beyond teaching as activities that work may not have sufcient traction with student teachers. Sadly then, other aspects of knowledge of practice will be poorly understood and seriously undervalued. Another consequence of knowledge of practice remaining tacit is in the challenge created in terms of the need for teaching intents and actions to be in harmony; and to be recognised as such through a teacher educators practice. Selfstudy has been to the fore in responding to this issue by alerting teacher educators to the need to practise what they preach. The ability of teacher educators to articulate their principles of practice (and to see the value in so doing) is a rst step toward seeking the harmony that matters in minimising the discord associated with the mixed messages so common when action and intent are at odds. Russell (1997) captured this aspect of a teacher educators identity when he outlined his argument as to why, in teaching teachers, the how of teaching is at least as important as the what of teaching. Russells how I teach IS the message raises important issues about identity as perceived by others through experiences of teaching and learning in teacher education programmes:
Most people who begin a teaching career seem to focus, naturally and understandably, on what they teach . . . People who move on to work in a teacher education context must continue to think about how teaching affects ones understanding of what one teaches, but a new dimension also appears. When individuals nd themselves recommending particular teaching strategies for particular purposes, they start to realise that their own teaching must be judged similarly. This new perspective constitutes the pedagogical turn, thinking long and hard about how we teach and the messages conveyed by how we teach . . . The content turn seems to come naturally . . . Others go further, moving beyond the various content pieces of the formal teacher education curriculum to begin to make the pedagogical turn, realising that how we teach teachers may send much more inuential messages than what we teach them . . . Everything comes together for me, as a teacher educator, when my efforts to challenge peoples premises and assumptions about learning come full circle and appear later in their subsequent teaching. (445)

Russell draws attention to a key aspect of a teacher educator s identity, the need and ability to focus on the pedagogical turn. It is through the pedagogical turn that a teacher educator s expertise is further rened and dened in the development of a scholarly identity. Developing a scholarly identity is important in shaping understandings of the value and place of teacher educators and their work in the academy. It situates teacher educators as more than just users of others knowledge, it establishes them as sophisticated producers of knowledge in ways that recast how that knowledge is conceived and used in teaching about teaching, and that inuence how the work of teacher educators might be conceived in the future. Looking to the future The pathway from successful/experienced school teacher to teacher educator is narrowing as academic expectations become increasingly important compared to personal professional experience. A beginning teacher educator is now expected to have completed a PhD and to have published and, perhaps, to have sought (and

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gained) research grants. Hence, a teacher educator is judged by the academy in the same way as those from other disciplines. Although the publish or perish mantra is a tad twee, the underlying message is nonetheless signicant and should not be ignored. However, that underlying message should not immediately be interpreted as carrying negative connotations. That which is researched, how and why, is still a matter of academic choice and teacher educators (like any other member of the academy) have an ability to decide how they approach their work in order to develop their expertise. If developing deeper understandings of what it means to be a teacher educator matters, then a pedagogy of teacher education is clearly a pathway that should not be ignored. The development of new knowledge is a central tenet of academic life and when that knowledge directly impacts practice, then in teaching about teaching, that is surely a powerful and signicant outcome. In reecting on his learning as a teacher educator, Russell (2010) has distilled what he has come to know through inquiring into his teacher education practices over a considerable period. His identity as a teacher educator stands out for all to see through the list that he has articulated as a way of prompting others to consider how to develop deeper understandings of their own work as teacher educators. He states that:
Returning to the secondary school classroom 20 years ago dramatically altered my perspectives on teacher education and set me on course to participate in the self-study of teacher education practices. I have studied my own practices in a method course and in practicum supervision, leading to signicant improvements in both. Now in my 33rd year as a teacher educator, I have developed a list of lessons learned that were far from obvious to me when I naively began my rst year of teaching people to teach. Despite the rhetoric of change and the eternal quest for improvement, teacher education programmes tend to be remarkably stable and similar across state and national boundaries. I am not looking for agreement, but I hope that my lessons learned will stimulate productive discussion and debate.

Russells list creates possibilities for debating, developing and articulating the knowledge of practice so important to creating teacher education programmes that might make a difference and begin to challenge the rhetoric of change and the eternal quest for improvement. However, that can only happen if teacher educators see the potential in a future they construct in which expertise is dened as more than being a teacher in a teacher education programme. Being a scholar of teacher education is something to be actively sought and developed by teachers of teaching, it offers a way of moving beyond naive conceptions of teaching as telling and learning as listening so that teacher preparation is seen and experienced as an educative experience, not a training programme: the goal of teacher education is not to tell student teachers how to teach, but to educate them to reason soundly about their teaching as well as helping them make explicit their needs and concerns for teaching (Nilsson 2008, 105). Conclusion In her in-depth longitudinal study into the work of teacher educators in New Zealand, Davey (2010) describes that which is encapsulated in a pedagogy of teacher education and has much to say about what that means for being a teacher educator. Davey offers insights into her own evolving identity as a scholar of

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teacher education. Her understanding of the complexity of the work of teaching about teaching challenges perceptions of teaching as doing and positions teaching as a eld of study in its own right; it situates teaching as a discipline (Loughran 2009). Daveys work makes clear that educators should be experts in the knowledge generation, dissemination and practice of the discipline of teaching; and that is a powerful way of thinking about what it means to be a teacher educator. As her work makes clear, identity is entwined with the how and why of teaching about teaching (and that is what constitutes a pedagogy of teacher education). As I trust this paper makes clear, the challenge now is for teacher educators to raise their prole in the academy by positively addressing the endemic uncertainty of knowledge of practice through an explication of their pedagogy of teacher education. Those teacher educators who choose to accept that challenge will be at the forefront of building better understandings of teacher education and help to build its status in the academy. Teacher educators who pursue such a course will be those who are comfortable with an identity developed as a consequence of placing knowledge and practice of teaching about teaching at the centre of the academic enterprise of teacher education. It stands to reason that in responding to this agenda, deans of education need to be proactive in supporting and developing their scholars of teacher education. Those that do will more likely than not have teacher education programmes through which the rhetoric of quality in teaching and learning about teaching matches the reality. Surely that is too good an opportunity to miss. References
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