University Faculty Leaders’ Views of Teacher Educators’ Professional Development

In this paper, we explore the views of Finnish university faculty leaders, such as deans and directors, concerning teacher educators' professional development. Although teachers' professional development has been investigated for decades, teacher educators' professional development has until recently been under-researched. Faculty leaders could be viewed as pedagogical leaders of their teaching staff. We set out to investigate what the leaders' understanding of teacher educators' professional development is, as well as how they think it should be promoted. We interviewed seven leaders. The main results of the interviews show that the leaders did not have a clear understanding of what teacher educators' professional development is. They viewed it as an autonomous, individual issue and also as related to the research that these PhD level teacher educators conduct as part of their everyday work. However, they had a very supportive attitude towards professional development, considered it to require some structuring or systematising and were also willing to invest resources in it.