Becoming a teacher education researcher

Book excerpt: You can successfully develop your higher education research profile while balancing the demands of training teachers and administration. While teacher education is key to preparing qualified teachers who can educate pupils for the demands of the twenty-first century, many university-based teacher educators experience conflicting demands in their professional practice. Their lives are often so dominated by teaching and associated work that their aspirations to develop a research profile are hampered. This text explores the critical issues faced by those working in teacher education and how they have negotiated the expectations and requirements of the Academy to establish themselves as leading international teacher education researchers. Through a series of autobiographical cases, this book demonstrates a range of trajectories in different contexts which have facilitated the development of teacher educators' successful research profiles. Understandings and realities of the policy context, the professional context, the research context (including funding, metrics, type of research valued), the institutional context and various personal positionings are examined in order to illuminate stories of research success and demonstrate their relevance to all teacher educators.