This article presents and discusses the findings of a research project, the main objective of which is to identify curriculum components that promote personal development as a nuclear part of teacher professional identity formation through pre-service teacher education. Curriculum is viewed as an ecological scenario with different subsystems and both as formal and informal. Identity formation is conceived as an ever-provisional result of a double transaction: the biographical one and the relational one. The curricula of four different historical periods of pre-service teacher education in Portugal and the professional identity of teachers trained within them were characterised through collection and analysis of documents and biographical narratives. Crossing results from the four periods, the quality of school climate emerges as an important variable to the quality of the teachers’ identity. The lifelong learning ethos seems to emerge when the training curriculum connects everyday learning with everyday life, namely by urging the students’ involvement in school life, peer learning activities and peer and teacher educators’ informal learning activities.

The relationship between master’s thesis work and teachers’ professional development has rarely been explored empirically, yet. Drawing upon a larger study, this paper investigates how teachers who were studying for or who have recently graduated from Master of Education programmes offered in five countries – Poland, Portugal, England, Latvia, Romania – perceive the usefulness of dissertation/thesis work for their professional development and how they attempt to use their MA research results in their (future) teaching practice. Results suggest that although most respondents recognized their MA dissertation/thesis work as having a positive impact on their professional development by enhancing their professionalism, personal development and growth, and understanding the relationship between research and practice, they were less confident about the use of MA research findings in their (future) workplaces. These results are discussed in the context of current challenges regarding master’s level education for teachers, national governments’ educational policies, and the relationship between research, teachers’ practices and professional development.

(2017). Teachers pursuing a doctoral degree: motivations and perceived impact. Educational Research: Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 335-352.

Background: This study consists of an analysis of the conceptions that teacher educators have of their work, identifying the relationship between their professional identities and their views of the professional qualities of the future teachers. Method and design: Semi-directive interviews with 19 teacher educators of a primary education teachers course were held, and qualitative analysis was undertaken. It was important to listen to the teacher educators in terms of meanings that were indicative of their identities, of their conceptions of teaching in primary education and of the corresponding professional teachers. Findings: The findings are grouped into four categories of professional identities of teacher educators: academic, cooperative, dual and supervisor (the latter two being mediating identities), and those different conceptions about school education and teacher professional work. The conceptions show similarities and divergences in terms of the knowledge that they think is important, their beliefs and personal values, the matters that they problematise and their performances as professional trainers and educators of future teachers. Conclusions: These findings enable us to understand that the identity of teacher educators, in the case studied, is largely built on a foundation of past and present experience gained in the field of school education. The exception is of the academic sort of teacher educators, whose identity appears to be based on the restricted area of initial teacher education.