Session Information
10 SES 11 B, Surveying Teacher Educators’ Professional Development Needs in Europe - and Beyond
Symposium
Contribution
Teacher educators in Israel work either at colleges of education under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Education or at universities. The colleges educate teachers for pre-school through lower secondary school, whereas universities prepare teachers for secondary school. Similar to other places (Lunenberg et al., 2014), teacher educators were traditionally recruited from schools, after gaining reputation as excellent teachers and obtaining a master degree. Nowadays, teacher educators must have Ph.D., and are mainly recruited from universities. Teaching experience, though desirable, is not a pre-condition for obtaining a position as a teacher educator. The MOFET Institute was established by the Israeli Ministry of Education some 30 years ago in order to provide professional development opportunities to college based teacher educators. The institute offers courses and workshops, as well as longer specialization programs, some of which provide teaching certificate. The institute operates teacher educators' learning communities, supports teacher educators' individual research projects and offers senior researchers opportunities to participate in large scale policies relevant researches (Reichenberg et al., 2013). The InFo-Ted survey was distributed among Israeli college-based teacher educators in order to find out satisfied they are with the professional development opportunities they have had thus far, what their current professional development needs are, and how they think these needs can be met. Given that the history of teacher education in Israel is similar to many European countries, and having the professional learning opportunities provided by the MOFET Institute in mind, the comparison with survey results obtained in European countries might be helpful in drawing conclusions and recommendations for the future. There were 101 Israeli respondents: 73% women, 82% hold Ph.D., 74% have previous experience in teaching. Similar to teacher educators from other countries (Ben‐Peretz et al., 2010), Israeli respondents' level of satisfaction with the professional development opportunities they have had was medium-high, and their level of interest in further professional learning was high. The highest ranking options for professional development were personal reading, academic writing, informal conversations with peers and international exchanges. Overall, Israeli respondents were slightly more interested in academic than educational subjects and activities, whereas it was the other way round among respondents from the European countries in the survey. Findings suggest that respondents' background as well as current assessment and promotion policies play a role in shaping teacher educators' professional development preferences and should be taken into consideration when planning professional development programmes.
References
Ben‐Peretz , M., Kleeman , S., Reichenberg, R., & Shimoni, S. (2010). Educators of educators: their goals, perceptions and practices. Professional Development in Education, 36(1-2), 111-129. Lunenberg, M., Dengerink, J., & Korthagen, F. (2014). The professional teacher educator: professional roles, behaviour and development of teacher educators. Rotterdam: Sense. Reichenberg, R., Kleeman, S., & Sagee, R. (2013). The professional development of teacher educators in the context of the school of professional development at the Mofet institute. In: M. Ben-Peretz, S. Kleeman, R. Reichenberg, and S. Shimoni (Eds.) Teacher educators as members of an evolving profession (pp. 105-133). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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