Professional Development of Teacher Educators in the 21st Century: An Analysis of the Teacher Educators’ Profile in Belize

The key players in teacher education (TE) are the teachers who teach prospective teachers, technically known as the teacher educators. Teacher educators, in this context, include those who are involved in developing and supporting teachers in the teacher learning continuum – i.e. across all levels, the pre-service, in-service and continuous professional development (CPD). However, this study does not capture the whole context; it focuses on the teacher educators at the Teacher Education Institutions' level. The task of teacher educators at this level is complex as they are on a journey of preparing teachers to teach effectively at the pre-primary, primary and secondary stages of school education. Currently, emerging is the concept of pedagogy of teacher education (Korthagen, 2001 & Loughran, 2014) which implicates that it is not only important that teacher educators be knowledgeable of their subject matter but also of how to make the tacit knowledge of teaching explicit to prospective teachers (European Commission Report, 2013). The data was collected using a modified questionnaire that was originally constructed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with 12 teacher educators. A major finding that emerged is the following--The top ranking professional development (PD) need of both full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) teacher educators is the need to be provided with on-line teaching knowledge and skills. The findings lend themselves towards a revisit to the profile of teacher educators where one exist and the development of one where it is non-existent. To conclude, it needs to be mentioned that as the related literature has also shown, Belize is not the only country facing challenges in addressing the need for professional development of the teacher educators significant for preparing the 21st century teachers. So the findings of the present study have implications towards the need for bringing about a change in the profile of teacher educators in other countries as well, as it may be vital for the planning of their developmental programmes.