Developing teacher educators: a technocratic rationality versus critical practical inquiry—the Ethiopian experience

This paper is an experience‐based reflection. Its aim is two‐fold. The first is to critique the technocratic model of developing teacher educators. The second is to speak in favour of the potential values of critical practitioner inquiry (CPI). I do this by presenting how I, together with a group of my colleagues, benefited from the project. Our experience shows that CPI emphasizes the possibility of transforming practitioners' personal, professional and social perspectives and encourages practitioners to sense and transform factors that perpetuate injustice and inequality in schools and wider society. The paper argues that CPI enables teachers and teacher educators to work towards making their students become conscious of where they are politically, socially, economically and structurally. However, CPI, like any other professional development project, cannot occur in a vacuum. The paper stresses that its transformative potential is constrained by various institutional and personal factors.