This article makes a contribution to understanding the challenges new teacher educators face in establishing their professional identities in Higher Education. The data collected for the study allowed the researchers to analyse the tensions and conflicts arising for 28 teacher educators in their first 3 years of working on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses in England. The findings of the study show that, despite having previous successful careers in school teaching, the majority of the interviewees took between 2 and 3 years to establish their new professional identities. They faced challenges in two key areas-developing a pedagogy for HE-based ITE work and becoming research active. Meeting both of these challenges required significant adaptations to their previous identities as schoolteachers.

The shutdown of universities and schools in England, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, came just as many pre-service students began their final practicum. This research focuses on the challenges this posed for teacher educators. Using qualitative research methods and concepts from spatial geography, the article explores how pedagogies adapted as the removal of the practicum relocated learning communities to new online spaces. Established practices changed quickly, with educators showing 'pedagogic agility'. Despite the relocation to newly-formed online spaces, many principles and 'intentionalities' of practice remained unchanged, as did the teacher educators' orientating values. Overall, there was a sense of both sameness and difference in some of the innovative pedagogies developed on the (g)local level. This research has international relevance in considering the spaces in which authentic teacher education can occur and the alternative pedagogies and technologies to support professional learning in the case of a 'missing' practicum.

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This article draws on an analysis of relevant research and an illustrative case study of one teacher educator's learning to debate how well-framed practitioner research might give some ways forward in devising appropriate professional learning provision for teacher educators entering Higher Education from work in schools. One of the starting premises for the writing is that supporting the development of teacher educators as scholars and researchers is an essential part of the professional development of this occupational group. In addition to contributing to the professional learning of individuals, such development is seen as vital for a number of other reasons. These include ensuring thriving teacher education communities, maintaining research-informed teaching in pre-and inservice courses for teachers and contributing to the building of capacity in the broad field of education research. The article raises a number of issues about the long-term value and importance of the proposed type of research as part of teacher educators' induction and professional development, with particular reference to the current situation for educational research in England.

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This paper examines the roles of research in teacher education across the four nations of the United Kingdom. Both devolution and on-going reviews of teacher education are facilitating a greater degree of cross-national divergence.England is becoming a distinct outlier, in which the locus for teacher education is moving increasingly away from Higher Education Institutions and towards an ever-growing number of school-based providers. While the idea of teaching as a research-based profession is increasingly evident in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, it seems that England, at least in respect of the political rhetoric, recent reforms and explicit definitions, is fixed on a contrastingly divergent trajectory towards the idea of teaching as a craft-based occupation, with a concomitant emphasis on a (re)turn to the practical. It is recommended that research is urgently needed to plot these divergences and to examine their consequences for teacher education, educational research and professionalism. IntroductionThere is widespread international agreement that '(T)he quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals' (OECD, 2011, p. 235). Attention to the quality of teachers has directed attention to national systems for teacher education (OECD, 2005(OECD, , 2007Schleicher, 2011) acknowledge that public discourses of teacher education (including statements about teaching such as standards) are decoded, mediated and instantiated in practice in markedly differing ways across the teacher education sector. This is not least because they are shaped by and act to shape the perspectives of the various institutions providing teacher education and the trainees, serving teachers, teacher educators and other stakeholders operating in the field. In short and simple terms then, there are often differences and diversities in the ways in which teacher education policy is mediated and enacted in practice.Our analysis identifies some similarities across the four jurisdictions, but it also demonstrates that policy in England appears to be diverging markedly from that elsewhere in the UK. This situation has particular implications for the future contribution of research-based knowledge in teacher preparation in England. But, despite these marked policy differences, many aspects of the nature (and quality) of teacher education in the four jurisdictions may not differ as much as political rhetoric, recent reforms and explicit definitions of teaching and teacher education might suggest. We return to discuss this issue in the conclusion to the paper. Methods and approachIn the original review, policies outlining the teachers' standards/competences and statutory requirements for ITE were drawn from government sources and key agencies in each of the four nations: the Training and Development Agency for Schools (and where relevant, information from 4 the previous versions of this agency, once known as the Teacher Training Agency) and the