Teacher educators’ approaches to teaching and connections with their perceptions of the closeness of their research and teaching

This study explores teacher educators’ perceptions of their approaches to teaching and the closeness of their research and teaching. A total of 115 participants completed a questionnaire. The results showed that these teacher educators perceived information transmission as an element of the student-focused approach to teaching. Three clusters were identified which mirrored different kinds of combinations of the teacher- and student-focused approaches to teaching. The results further revealed that these clusters were related to how closely teacher educators considered their teaching and research to be related to each other.