Teacher educators in Finland and Turkey: their roles, knowledge base, and professional development profiles

ABSTRACT

The professional development of teacher educators has received global interest worldwide following the notion that teacher educators are profoundly responsible for teacher education quality. Still, research on teacher educator professional development is scarce in Finland and under-researched in Turkey. In this article, the authors examine how teacher educators in two institutes in Finland and Turkey define their roles and knowledge base as teacher educators, professional development practices, problems in professional development, and suggestions for better professional learning opportunities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 university-based and school-based teacher educators working at two universities and two school settings in Finland and Turkey. Similarities and differences between the two groups in their professional development practices, problems and suggestions are discussed. The results reveal that though teacher education policies in these two countries share certain commonalities in structure and governance, definitions of professional development and practices differ in two contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher educator
• knowledge base
• professional development
• Finland
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Ufuk Ataş would like to thank TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) for covering his travel and accomodation expenses of his visit to Finland for data collection as part of the 2214/A Scholarship Programme under grant [1059B141500408].

Notes on contributors

Ufuk Ataş

Ufuk Ataş holds a PhD in English Language Teaching from Middle East Technical University, currently working as an Assistant Professor at Artvin Çoruh University, Turkey. His research interests include pre-service/in-service teacher education, professional development of teachers and teacher educators, teacher education programmes/curriculum and code-switching in language classrooms.

Ayşegül Daloğlu

Ayşegül Daloğlu is a Professor in the Department of Foreign Language Education, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Her areas of professional interest include curriculum development and programme evaluation, teacher education, testing and assessment in English language education.

Raili K. Hildén

Raili K. Hildén is an Associate Professor of foreign language didactics and language assessment at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her societal merits cover a range of national and off-shore expert duties including the position of the chair of the Finnish Matriculation Examination Board Language section.