This paper focuses on the professional and academic development of mid-career teacher educators from two universities in England. The objectives of the study were to analyse and compare the career experiences of teacher educators; in particular, to identify stages of development, landmark events and contextual factors affecting professional…

Lifelong learning has become a prominent fixture in educational policy in recent years in many countries around the world. In terms of teacher education, it is now widely accepted that initial teacher education is insufficient for the lifelong professional needs of teachers. From September 2012, initial teacher education in Ireland will be offered…

This paper outlines the increasing cultural diversity of Australia's education settings and explicates the global education movement and the new Australian Early Years Learning Framework. It discusses the implication of these factors for early childhood education practice and early childhood teacher education. The key research question considered…

In line with the principles of the Bologna Process, teacher education systems across Europe are converging along a common path. Taking the Republic of Ireland (Ireland) as a case study, this paper examines the European agenda in relation to teacher education and asks how individual nation states are coping with the demands of greater comparability…

Current models of initial teacher training (ITT) in England include substantial elements of school-based experience developed in collaborative partnerships with local schools involving university tutors working with experienced classroom teachers. Balance in such partnerships has been characterised as trainees focusing on day-to-day pragmatics of…

This study focuses on student teachers' perceptions of their professional identity. The respondents are students enrolled in a three-year course in secondary education teaching at bachelor level. Questionnaires were filled out by first-year, second-year and third-year students from two colleges. The questionnaire included four scales: commitment…

This study aims to understand teachers' perspectives on their roles in higher education, their views about the adoption of a social-constructivist approach to teaching and learning and the integration of online collaborative learning in blended learning environments in higher education from a cross cultural perspective. We interviewed 60 Chinese…

In this article, I argue that immigrant bilingual teachers and mother-tongue teachers are not formally recognised as "genuine" teachers in the Norwegian school system. Norwegian education authorities have invested considerable effort in order to strengthen the competences of bilingual teachers and to both recognise and formalise their home country…

This article looks at the non-tenure-line instructors in a teacher education programme. Although they play a crucial role in teacher education, they largely toil in the shadows. They have limited voice in programme decisions, are offered little or no induction, and often work in isolation. The high turnover in staff and their heavy teaching and…

During the last decade several professional standards describing competencies for teaching staff in secondary and higher education have been developed. Not all these standards are considered fruitful by the relevant professional communities of teachers and teacher educators. In this article we analyse the experiences with the Dutch standard for…

This research study was originally commissioned by ESCalate as part of its agenda for developing induction support for pre-service teacher educators in England. The study aimed to collect examples of the practices used by Higher Education Institutions in inducting new teacher educators and to analyse induction provision from the perspectives of a…

This article explains the process that is causing systems of teacher education in the EU, the USA and elsewhere to converge into a form of fewer qualitative distinctions. We argue that expansion brought about by processes familiar to globalisation is creating wide differences in the cost of information that incentivises use of standardised…

This paper critically considers teacher education in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It was stimulated by an exchange programme between student teachers from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for a period of school-based work in each other's jurisdictions. It examines recent curricular developments, partnership with…

The article focuses on the training of higher education language teachers from a quality enhancement perspective. After a brief discussion of the nature of quality in higher education, the article considers the implications which the expansion of language learning in higher education in Europe has for the teachers involve in designing and…

This article draws on research involving 28 teacher educators in the first 3 years of their careers in the English higher education sector. It discusses the areas of tension they found in making the transition from teaching in the school sector to working in universities, the priorities they identified for their induction and the induction…