Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing policy landscape for teacher education in England, we present the initial findings from a survey of 153 teacher educators about their learning experiences and development priorities for professional learning. Most teacher educators in England still work, at least partly in a university, but the occupational group is often now defined to include serving school teachers working as mentors or taking on more extended teacher education roles. Here we focus only on those who are university-based as the overall InFo-TED international design made the decision not to include the hard-to-reach group of school-based teacher educators in the sampling strategy for this first iteration of the survey. We conceive both professional development and professional learning as portmanteau terms used to describe the formal and informal processes that enable teacher educators to improve their professional practice throughout their careers with a commitment to transform education for the better. At present there are few systemic routes for teacher educators’ ongoing learning and little research documentation of these routes (Berry 2013; Murray et al 2011; Smith 2011). Given the unique occupational position of teacher educators and the lack of formal focus on their professional development, our starting point for teacher educators’ professional development lies in their practice situated and positioned within local, national, regional and global policy contexts. While the electronic survey generated mainly quantitative data, there were qualitative features embedded within the survey design. Both types of data will be used in the presentation to draw out some of the complexities that emerge when exploring this professional group in a country undergoing a seismic and radical shift in its arrangements for the ways in which teachers are being prepared for their future careers. The results will be reported under the three headings in the survey: life as a teacher educator; teacher education and research; and professional learning opportunities. The first sections will give contextual details, with priority given to the findings in the last section where we aimed to find out what their current professional development needs are and how they think these needs can best be met. The sample group’s requests for professional development included emphases on developing research skills, writing for publication, enhancing ‘second order’ pedagogies (Murray, 2002) and guidance in negotiating the multiple changes underway in teacher education in England.