Short summary of the paper

This study targets a better empirical understanding of teacher educators’ researcherly disposition, broadly defined as teacher educators’ habit of mind to engage with research. Data was collected from an international sample of 1158 higher education-based teacher educators in six countries, most of them being European. The first part of the paper discusses the development of iTERDS, i.e., the international Teacher Educators’ Researcherly Disposition Scale. This 16-item scale distinguishes three subdimensions: (1) Valuing research (6 items), (2) Being a smart consumer of research (5 items), and (3) Being a producer of research (5 items). Goodness of fit estimates indicate good fit. The second part of the paper explores differences in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition by means of cluster analysis. Four different clusters of teacher educators were found: Cluster 1 ‘inactive to research teacher educators’, Cluster 2 ‘well-read teacher educators’, Cluster 3 ‘researching teacher educators’, and Cluster 4 ‘teacher educator-researchers’. Post hoc analyses on these clusters explore relevant background differences between the clusters in terms of qualifications and work context.

Background

Given the demands on teacher educators to be both teachers of teachers and researchers, an increased focus is put on teacher educators as researchers. In this regard, worldwide, researchers and policymakers seem to agree that teacher educators need to develop and nurture such a researcherly disposition (also referred to as, research attitude or inquiry as stance) to improve the quality of their practice and to professionally develop as a teacher educator (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith, Grudnoff, Orland-Barak, Smith, 2019; Loughran, 2014; Vanassche et al., 2015). As such, concepts such as a “research journey” or developing a “researcherly disposition” are often used when discussing teacher educators’ professional development. Based on an extensive review of the literature, Tack and Vanderlinde (2014) define teacher educators’ researcherly disposition as ‘teacher educators’ habit of mind to engage with research – as both consumers and producers of research – to improve their practice and contribute to the knowledge base on teacher education.’ (p.301).

With few exceptions (see Czerniawski et al., 2017; Tack & Vanderlinde, 2016; 2018, Tack, Rots, Struyven, Valcke & Vanderlinde, 2018), however, large-scale empirical evidence on teacher educators’ professional development is still scarce. However, more recently, several studies have attempted to explore teacher educators' attitudes towards and engagement with research (for example, MacPhail & O’Sullivan, 2019; Ping, Schellings and Beijaard, 2018; Guberman et al., 2020; Smith and Flores, 2019; Van der Klink et al., 2017). These studies show that teacher educators’ engagement in research cannot be considered as being an obvious part of every teacher educators’ practice (Griffiths, Thompson & Hryniewicz, 2014; Livingston et al., 2014; Lunenberg et al., 2014). Moreover, those who do consider research to be a part of their work, seem to greatly differ in their perceptions of how to fulfill this researcher role (Lunenberg et al., 2014). These perceptions range from merely reading published research to conducting research into one’s own practice and disseminating these results in research journals or at conferences.

To further empirical insight in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition, this study first adapts an existing instrument on teacher educators’ researcherly disposition and targets its use for an international context (research goal 1 - RG1). Afterwards, and based on the first findings of previous studies, this study aims to further study differences in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition (research goal 2 - RG2). In so doing, this paper presents the results of a theory guided analysis of 1158 teacher educators’ self-reported researcherly disposition from six different countries, most of them European. educators’ self-reported researcherly disposition (research goal 2 - RG2).

Data was collected from an international sample of 1158 higher education-based teacher educators in six countries, most of them being European. Participants are teacher educators working in higher education institutions in the Netherlands, (n=358; 33.8%), the UK (n=294; 27.8%), Belgium (n=176; 16.6%), Israel (n=101; 9.5%), Norway (n=76; 7.2%), and Ireland (n=54; 5.1%). here were 313 (31.3%) males and 688 (68.7%) females (the others did not answer this question); with a median age group of 45-54 years old. The number of years of experience as teacher educators ranged from 1 to 47, with a mean of 11.99 years (SD = 8.77). Participants included 341 (34.0%) PhD holders, 599 (59.6%) Master’s degree holders, 61 (6.1%) with BA/BSc, and 3 (0.03%) with non-academic qualifications. Additionally, 154 provided no information on their academic qualifications. The online survey included both questions about teacher educators’ background as well as about their researcherly disposition. A shortened version of TERDS (Tack & Vanderlinde, 2016) was used to advance insight in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition on an international level. TERDS - the ‘Teacher Educators Researcherly Disposition Scale’ – is a 20-item survey that assesses teacher educators’ self-reported researcherly disposition. TERDS distinguishes four subscales: (1) Valuing research (6 items), (2) Being a smart consumer of research (6 items), (3) Being able to conduct research (4 items) and (4) Conducting research (4 items). Like the longer version of TERDS, respondents were asked to rate each item separately on a six-point agree-disagree continuum, with 0=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree. The term ‘research’ was also defined in the survey, thereby ensuring that all teacher educators participating would understand the concept in a similar way. Research was defined as the ‘systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to develop knowledge, new theories or answer questions occurring from practice or policy’. To advance insight in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition (RG1), both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed. The EFA was performed to identify the number of factors, while the CFA was performed to determine the internal consistency of the scales. To assess differences in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition (RG2), a series of cluster analyses was conducted to group the participants in a limited number of clusters, according to their researcherly disposition.

This study aimed to further advance insight in higher education-based teacher educators’ researcherly disposition. First, iTERDS was developed. iTERDS is a reliable 16-item self-reported measurement instrument on teacher educators’ researcherly disposition that can be further used across European countries. It represents three interrelated factors: (1) ‘Valuing research’, (2) ‘Being a smart consumer of research’, and (3) ‘Being a producer of research’. Afterwards, cluster analyses were performed to empirically explore differences in teacher educators’ researcherly disposition. Four clusters could be retained and were labeled as follows: (1) Cluster 1 inactive to research teacher educators, (2) Cluster 2 well-read teacher educators, (3) Cluster 3 researching teacher educators, (4) Cluster 4 teacher educator-researchers. Finally, post hoc analyses informed us with further characteristics of these clusters. As expected, given the population demographics, teacher educators with PhDs and teacher educators working in universities seem to be mostly part of either Cluster 3 or Cluster 4. Teacher educators with other qualification backgrounds and teacher educators working in colleges of higher education are spread among the four clusters. Empirically, this study adds to the literature by providing a measurement instrument, abbreviated iTERDS, that can be used across European countries as a common language. Moreover, the results of this study provide an empirical exploration of teacher educators’ researcherly disposition on a relatively large and international scale. Methodologically, this paper adds to the rather young field of research on teacher educators’ professional development by presenting the results of a large-scale quantitative study. Whilst the situation is slowly changing (see, for instance Czerniawski, 2017; Tack, Valcke, Rots, Struyven & Vanderlinde, 2018; Tack & Vanderlinde, 2016), such studies are still scarce in a field that is still highly characterized by small-scale qualitative studies (see Lunenberg et al., 2014; Murray, Smith, Vanderlinde, & Lunenberg, 2021).

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