Topic: The Professional Development of Teacher Educators: The Experience from Tutors’ Education Programme in Tanzania. Despite the fact that teacher educators’ professional development has a very significant effect on performance of teacher education; in many education systems, teacher educators’ professional development is less addressed than teacher professional development. As a matter of causal relationship the same gap is also reflected in educational research forum. Hence this study aims to break this gap by focusing on teacher educators’ professional development programme termed as tutors' education programme (TEP). TEP is an established programme for teacher educators’ professional development in Tanzania. The programme was introduced by teacher education department in collaboration with Stockholm Institute of Education of Sweden. The intention of the programme is to provide professional development to all teacher educators teaching in teachers’ colleges. Specifically in this study I want to investigate teacher educators’ conceptions of the contribution of TEP towards improving teacher education in Tanzania. The study is guided by two research questions: 1)How teacher educator’s participation in TEP has contributed to their personal professional growth? 2)How teacher educators’ professional development through TEP has contributed to the improvement of teacher education? Research question 1 aims at understanding of how individual teacher educators who have participated TEP conceive the contribution of the programme to their personal and professional development; while research question 2 intends to explore the contribution of TEP in improving teacher education in general and in particular, to identify its influence on classroom teaching and learning. The study is of great importance to the teacher educators and other stakeholders of teacher education as it is likely to come out with constructive ideas that can consolidate TEP. Also the study may stimulate interests among researchers to study the need of teacher education in Tanzania and if possible establish other teacher educators’ professional development programmes to cater the needs. The theoretical framework of this study is based on two main themes namely teacher educators’ professional development and the overview of TEP in Tanzanian teacher education. Teaching and learning as major issues of TEP are given special consideration in the discussion of TEP.

Qualitative research method employing phenomenographic approach will be used. Interview will be used as instrument for data collection. 12 teacher educators who have participated TEP will be used as respondents of the study.

The expected findings in this study will be described and discusssed with focus to the contribution of TEP in improving teacher education in Tanzania.