Teacher Educators’ Strategies for Continuous Professional Transformation

Abstract

Continuous professional transformation among teacher educators is generally regarded as an ongoing process and often taken for granted in both discussion and research. The purpose of this reflective paper is to explore strategies for continuous professional transformation among teacher educators. For it, we (authors) employed a longitudinal qualitative research design, reflective research approach. We relied on qualitative data generated from 2022 to 2024 based on our, six authors’ professional reflective experiences, discussions, observations, and programs. We generated data texts from written reflections, documents, and meeting minutes. Adapting thematic data analysis approach we explored nine themes of continuous professional transformation among teacher educators such as engaging in critical collaborative inquiry, nurturing diverse learners, sharing success and sad stories, fostering intellectual growth and ethics, conducting research, monitoring and mentoring, problem solving, pedagogical innovation, and continuous reflective practices. The findings of our study revealed the collaborative inquiry, self-reflection, and lifelong learning are essential for professional growth, enabling educators to refine their practices in response to evolving educational needs. The study also revealed the chief strategies for continuous professional development as taking responsibility of given tasks, making contributions in collaborative tasks and taking self-initiation. Our study recommends the potential implications of these strategies as significant to the early career teacher educators who aspire for continuous professional transformation in their university contexts.