Teacher educators’ involvement in research has been the focus of extensive research in the last decades, since it is believed that future developments in teacher education should be research informed, and that research is the key to teacher educators’ professional development.  Although ‘Teacher educator’ may be broadly defined as any professional who teaches teachers, this study involves college based teacher educators who provide initial teacher education to student teachers. Teacher educators are recruited into colleges of education either from schools, where they have gained reputation as outstanding teachers, or from the universities, where they have gained scholarly knowledge in diverse disciplinary fields and basic research skills. In both cases, teacher education is a second career that needs to be formed after the first professional identity of either ‘teacher’ or ‘disciplinary scholar’ is established.

What does it mean to be a teacher educator? Swennen, Jones and Volman (2010) describe four sub-identities of teacher educators: school teachers; teachers in higher education institutes who specialize in adult education; second order teachers, who teach students about teaching; and researchers.

Although each of these roles is challenging, the ‘researcher’ sub-identity seems to be particularly vulnerable. Teacher educators may feel they have no research skills at all, or that they lack the specific research skills required for educational research (Izadinia, 2014). Those who arrive into college from school may be tempted to further develop their teaching expertise rather than to struggle to become researchers from scratch. Some may feel that the demand to become researchers expresses disregard for their work as expert teachers, but even when viewed favorably, teachers may feel overloaded by their diverse roles. When teaching and research compete for constrained time resources teacher educators may feel that research challenges rather than supports their professional integrity (Sikes, 2006).    

Can the ‘researcher’ and the ‘teacher’ sub-identities be integrated?  It is believed that practitioners who perform small scale self-studies, collecting data on their own work, knowledge and thinking processes contribute to teacher education as a discipline in addition to improving their work (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Zeichner, 2005). It is further stressed that self-studies need to be carried out within professional communities of colleagues who support and critically examine each other’s work, nurture their shared professional identity and deal together with current challenges (Ben-Peretz et al., 2010; Gemmell, Griffiths & Kibble, 2010). Brown, Rowley and Smith (2014) present an example of a teacher educator whose pedagogy provides students with opportunities to study their own learning, in order to help them become aware of the factors that shape learning. These factors need to be taken in account while choosing a teaching strategy. Such research realizes three of the teacher educators’ sub-identities simultaneously: the researcher, the adult educator, and the second order teacher (Brown, Rowley & Smith, 2014).

Unfortunately, such examples are relatively rare. It seems that teacher educators need to acquire lacking research skills and get acquainted with successful models integrating the professions’ sub-identities.

Teacher educators’ research is supported in both countries. Teacher educators are offered access to professional journals and research reports, courses in research methodology, methodological consultants, grants that cover research expenses as well as some compensation for the time invested in research.

The aim of the current study is to describe teacher educators' attitudes towards and involvement in research, in two countries, Austria and Israel. Their use of the support they are offered will be examined, as well as their level of satisfaction with it. Finally, they will be asked what kinds of additional support could enhance their involvement in research. 

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