Leading the renewal of a profession: Approaches to developing teacher educators’ research capacity in higher education

Teacher educators in higher education are often encouraged to engage with research to enhance their own subject knowledge and professional practice, improve teacher education programmes, and contribute to educating better trainee teachers. However, research shows that there are a number of barriers for teacher educators to engage with research. Drawing on our experiences of working with teacher educators in higher education contexts in England, this article outlines six institutional approaches in supporting research capacity development. These approaches include research training, mentorship, internal funding, writing support, workload recognition, and the cultivation of a research culture to value practitioner research. We argue that sustained institutional commitment to these areas is essential to empower teacher educators to contribute to knowledge production, improve teaching practice, and engage with wider conversations about teacher education reforms. Also, developing research capacity among teacher educators is central to educating a new generation of teaching professionals who improve educational practice through meaningful engagement with research-informed teacher enquiry. In the renewal of a profession, we argue for an inclusive view of research and teaching as conjoined academic practice which acts as a bulwark against unequal, elitist and career-limiting hierarchical perceptions when these activities are disaggregated.