Science teacher educators career narratives and life histories

Research interest
A firsthand understanding of an insider – my own – is that of a great variation within science teacher educators’ professional development and personal practice. The field of science teacher educators is not well researched, however there is an emerging field of international studies on being and becoming a teacher educator as well as on their lives and work (Swennen and White 2021; Jaworski and Woods, 2008; Lorist and Swennen, 2016). These studies bring forward the voices of teacher educators (Swennen and White, 2021) and critical stances to these voices (Holdsworth, 2021). As stated above the Danish qualification of teacher educators might provide a different background for the voices of Danish teacher educators. Does this give different relations between work and personal life, and furthermore is science teacher educators a unique group here with distinct characteristics in their experience of meaning. This leads me to my two research questions.
Research questions
- How is science teacher educators work related to their lives?
- What does it mean to be a science teacher educator?

Two years ago, in 2022 I had a flashback to My PhD work as I started to wonder about science teacher educators (STE) entanglement of life and work – my own kin as I have been science teacher educator for close to 30 years. Was that just a fata morgana or is it really a like entanglement? – that’s the endeavour I recently have undertaken to investigate.

Analysis to come – and papers to write
•Life histories – Significant events; Goodson & Sikes (2001), Swennen & Lorist (2016)
•Career narratives –Trajectories; Guberman et al (2021),
•Meaning – Frankl (1992)
•Values – Schlick (2020) and the ATEE RDC group ‘Empowering teacher education’ (2024).
•Qualitative content analysis