Abstract

This paper seeks to understand teacher educators’ current conceptions of teaching in the context of their own professional socialization. Many teacher educators have been teachers before entering the teacher educator profession and all teacher educators have memories as pupils in classrooms. In what ways have these personal beliefs and memories about good (and bad) teaching affected their images of self as a teacher educator? Findings from teacher educators life-story interviews indicate that teacher educators hold specific conceptions about teaching, grounded in their own experiences as a teacher and as a pupil. This is not to suggest that teacher educators simply imitate (good) role-models (and reject the bad ones). Several previous experiences have influenced the type of teacher educator they wanted to become. Also, gender has impacted teacher educators' teacher-role identity. As such, the ultimate choice to become a teacher educator is the outcome of a dynamic choice process.