institutional provision, the position is more fragile, especially for HE-based edu-
cators. Whilst all three countries have the same avowed intentions for high quality
teacher education and schooling, they have initiated very different ways of achieving
and sustaining this excellence through the degrees of attention given to their pro-
fessional learning for teacher educators. Such nationally specific provision is clearly
important, but what spaces are there for systematic and sustainable pan-European
learning? To consider this issue, we now turn to analyze the work of Info-TED.
44.3.5 Info-TED and Its Vision for Teacher Educators’
Professional Development
Info-TED is a pan-European organisation which aims to bring together, exchange
and promote research, policy and practice about teacher educators’professional
development in order to develop the professional identities and knowledge bases.
The group works from the conviction that educating teacher educators cannot be an
ad hoc process, involve only narrow responses to national or institutional impera-
tives. As Vanassche et al. (in press) state, this learning is definitely not only about
‘instrumental knowledge (i.e.,‘how to’-questions: how to teach; identifying the most
effective approaches)’(rather)‘it must also address‘what’-questions (i.e., selecting cur-
riculum materials),‘why’-questions (i.e., defining goals and purposes), and‘who’-ques-
tions (i.e., expertise and professional responsibility of teacher educators)’. (Vanassche et al.,
in press: page number not yet known)Practice is conceptualized as the starting point for professional development, rather
than rather than standards or competence profiles which may attempt to provide a
‘blueprint’(Kelchtermans 2013 ).^1 In order to conceptualise and map professional
learning, thefirst stage of our work has involved the development of a conceptual
model (see Fig.44.1). This provides a common language with which to describe,
communicate and discuss the diversity of pan-European teacher education. This is
our attempt to visualize what we understand about teacher educators’professional
development. Full details of the model can be found on the group’s website, but in
summary teacher educators’practices are seen as situated in personal, institutional,
national and international policy contexts. Also presented on the left-hand side of our
model is a non-exhaustive list of possible content domains (including social and
technological change, social diversity and communications between teacher educa-
tors and other stakeholders, such as policymakers) which could be consideration
when crafting teacher educators’professional learning opportunities.
In the group’s approach then, high quality professional learning provision is
required to grow and sustain teacher educators’expertise through the development of
(^1) There is, of course, a distinct irony here in that the very act of creating a language and such a
model implies a normative stance. We acknowledge this irony and the tensions between this stance
and our practice-based intentions.
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