The professional learning of teacher educators has become a topic of increasing interest in the past decade (Loughran, 2014).  So much so that teacher educator  professional learning is a current policy priority in the European Union (European Commission, Education and Training, 2013) who identify ‘competences in collaborating, communicating and making connections with other areas’ (p.16) as an important aspect of professional learning.  Communication has also been identified as a core competence in the literature on teacher education (e.g., Koster & Dengerink, 2001; Loughran, 2006).  In Ireland, the Teaching Council have also identified communication as a key competence suggesting that school-based teacher educators should ‘be good communicators, sensitive to the viewpoints of others’ (p.20).

While the importance of the relational in teaching is acknowledged, there are significant gaps in our understanding of how professional learning focused on communication skills is taken up by teacher educators in their teacher education practices.  Professional learning of teachers and teacher educators is often situated within the structure of learning communities.  The purpose of this research was to examine the professional learning experiences of individual teacher educators, within a community of learners, related to the area of communication and how this professional learning influenced their pedagogical practices with pre-service teachers. The specific research question guiding this paper is: What are teacher educators’ experiences of professional learning using photovoice methodologies?

 Photo elicitation provides a model for collaborative research where participants can share their interpretations of their experiences through discussion of photographic images. We proposed that using photo elicitation provided an opportunity for participants to ‘show rather than ‘tell’ aspects of their identity that might have otherwise remained hidden’ (Croghan, Griffin, Hunter, & Phoenix, 2008, p.345). The use of photo voice methods with teacher educators in this research is innovative. Previously, photo voice and photo elicitation visual methodologies (Harper, 2002) have been used with children and teachers, but not with teacher educators. Therefore, this research can contribute to the literature by providing new insights on teacher educator learning within professional development experiences.

Theoretically the project is grounded in situated learning. Situated perspectives emphasize learning as a social process which takes place as individuals participate in a community (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996). These perspectives assume that knowledge is inseparable from the contexts and activities in which it develops. This contextual approach makes the situated perspective a compelling framework to study teacher educator learning. Lave and Wenger’s (1991) model of situated learning proposes that learning involves a process of engagement in a community of practice (COP). Learning within a COP requires a process of social participation emphasizing the relationship between knowledge and the situations in which it is acquired and used. In their definition, Kirk and Macdonald (1998) explain COPs as “any collectivity or group who together contribute to shared or public practices in a particular sphere of life” (p. 380). The value of COPs is that they allow for the joint construction of contextualized knowledge of practice through conversation and writing (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005) further conceptualize learning within a COP as cyclical, opposed to hierarchical, driven by a vision supported by understanding, practices, dispositions, tools. These recurring interrelationships provide coherence to teacher educator learning.

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