@inproceedings{01J7P3A3JDQAD852WHH51BZV1F,
  abstract     = {{Addressing issues of diversity, inclusion and equity is a contemporary challenge at all levels of
education, as well as in society at large (Vantieghem & Van de Putte, 2019). Teacher educators in
particular have an important responsibility in meeting this challenge, as they foster how diversity is
addressed in education by educating the next generation of teachers (O’Hara & Pritchard, 2008).
However, prior research on teacher educators’ dealing with diversity has pointed out that teacher
educators themselves feel insecure and encounter various perceived barriers to deal with diversity
adequately (Ponet et al., under review). Moreover, some teacher educators show little awareness of
what implicit -sometimes negative- messages they convey to their student teachers by the ways they
talk about and engage in dealing with diversity. Well-designed professional development initiatives
(PDI) are therefore needed to respond to these constraints to deal with diversity in an inclusive and
equitable way. Unfortunately, in many national and higher education institutional policies only limited
attention is given to PDI’s for teacher educators (Vanderlinde et al., 2021). In this study, it was our
goal to investigate and describe the design for an impactful teacher educator PDI on dealing with
diversity. After a first consultation of the literature on effective PDI’s in education and the professional
development of teacher educators (e.g., Merchie et al., 2016; Tack et al., 2021), a co-creative
tailored-based approach for the design of the PDI seemed most promising. A double case study was
conducted to gain insight 1) into the context of two teacher education colleges in Flanders that
participate in a PDI to foster teacher educators’ dealing with diversity, and 2) into the individual
professional development needs of participating teacher educators. In particular, building on
qualitative methodologies, semi-structured interviews were conducted (Mortelmans, 2011). On the
one hand with all teacher educator participants (n=20), on the other hand with one key actor per
institution that is involved in policy regarding professional development and regarding diversity,
inclusion and equity. Additionally, the communication between the research team and the facilitators
of the PDI were scrutinized. The data was explored via inductive coding techniques. Consequently,
this resulted in 8 design principles for the PDI emerging from the data. For instance, the PDI should
take the existing practices of teacher educators as a starting point; challenge their frames of
references as a precondition to foster other practices; and include choices to focus on and cater the
specific individual needs of the participants. Furthermore, taking these design principles and the
specificity of each teacher college in account, a new PDI was designed with tailored alterations to the
specific contexts. This PDI is presented in the article. This study adds to the field in a theoretical and
practical way. Theoretically, the design principles expand the limited literature on teacher educators’
PDI for dealing with diversity. Practically, policy makers as well as teacher educators themselves can
find inspiration to design own PDI’s to foster dealing with diversity and make tailored alterations.}},
  author       = {{Ponet, Benjamin and Tack, Hanne and Vantieghem, Wendelien and Vanderlinde, Ruben}},
  booktitle    = {{European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2023 : the value of diversity in education and educational research, Abstracts}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Glasgow, UK}},
  title        = {{Diversity responsive teacher educators : a professional development trajectory}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}