Professional development of teachers and teacher educators

This paper provides an overview of issues related to professional development of teachers and teacher educators. The paper discusses professional development in general and then highlights similarities, and to a larger degree, differences between professional development of school teachers and teacher educators working in academic institutions.

The discussion is based on the assumption that professional development is an internal process of growth in which professionals engage individually and within professional communities, within formal and informal frameworks. Reasons for undertaking professional development and types of activities as presented in recent literature are discussed.

The last part of the paper introduces constraints on the professional development activity of both teachers and teacher educators claiming that the main challenge for the professional community is to challenge these constraints

Kari Smith (PH.D.) is a Professor of Education and head of Teacher Education at the University of  Bergen, Norway. She is also affiliated to Oranim Academic College of Education in Israel.

Professor Smith has served as the co-ordinator of the special interest group on Testing, Evaluation and Assessment in the International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), and as a  joint co-ordinator of the Testing SIG in the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction (EARLI).

Her main publications and research interests are in areas of professional development, educational assessment, portfolio and self-assessment