The attention being devoted to teacher educators as professionals and their professional development is unquestionably increasing. Whilst much of that attention is being directed at teacher educators in different countries, international comparisons have been quite rare to date. The research question addressed in this study was: 'Do experienced teacher educators from different countries differ in their concerns, professional development activities and developmental goals?' Interviews were conducted with 25 participants from 10 different countries, all of whom were experienced teacher educators. Teacher educators' concerns varied in the course of their careers. During their induction their primary focus tended to be on survival, whereas later on in their careers their concerns became linked to their own professional identity and their students as individuals. Participants from all the participating countries were involved in a range of developmental activities. A large majority was involved in research-related activities which they perceived as an important tool in their professional development. All the participants had plans for their further professional development but sometimes foresaw hindrances to the realisation of those plans, such as a lack of resources and time. The interview data did not provide evidence to suggest clear country-specific differences. In fact, the opposite would appear to be the case: teacher educators from different countries seem to have similar concerns, and their current professional development activities and plans for future development are also quite comparable. Keywords: professional development; teacher educators; international comparison; international researchIntroduction There is growing recognition that teacher educators can only continue to act as professionals if they are engaged in further professional development throughout their entire career. In the slipstream of the broadly acknowledged views on improving teacher education there is growing focus on the qualities of teacher educators involved in teaching the next generations of teachers (ETUCE Professional Development in Education, 2017 Vol. 43, No. 2, 163-178, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2015 concerns; that is, how to ensure sufficient numbers of novice teacher educators (Snoek et al. 2011).Mc Gee and Lawrence (2009, p. 140) argue that: 'Teacher educators work with teachers to promote and support professional learning, and so their own professional learning is particularly important. It is surprising, therefore, to find that the professional learning of teacher educators is often neglected'. Teacher educators themselves as a professional group are increasingly aware of the need to continue to work on their competences and they acknowledge the importance of being -or becoming -lifelong learners who keep in touch with the latest developments and insights in their own field (Swennen and Van der Klink 2009).In this article we use the following definition of teacher educators proposed by, among others, Dengerink...

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The context of the present paper is a school of professional development for teacher educators. One of the school's unique features is the employment of tutors/mentors, who are colleagues of their tutees in different study programmes. It has been established that many teacher educators enter the profession 'accidentally', whether from school teaching or from academia, without any prior training. Therefore, they require lengthy periods of time to consolidate their new professional identity. This paper presents a model of professional development that involves tutoring/mentoring, and focuses on the interaction between tutor and tutee as perceived by the tutees. There are four tutors assigned to each of the two-year specialization programmes offered at the school. All of them are staff members from various teacher training colleges. The research reported employed a mixed-methods design methodology comprising a questionnaire that was drafted especially for this research and was based on semi-structured interviews and pilot sampling. Six graduates were interviewed and 231 (out of the 500) graduates responded to the questionnaire. They were asked about the required properties of a tutor and about the elements they perceived to be most beneficial to the tutees' professional development. The findings point to the benefits of tutoring. The terms 'tutor' and 'mentor' are used in this paper interchangeably. IntroductionThe context of the present paper is a school of professional development (SPD) for teacher educators. The school is part of an intercollegiate professional development institute serving teacher educators. It offers several specialization programmes for the purpose of enhancing teacher educators' professional development. One of the unique features of the school's model of professional development involves tutoring/ mentoring, and in many cases the tutors in the different study programmes are colleagues of their tutees.In this paper, we employ the terms mentor and tutor interchangeably. Further elaboration on the topic is offered in the background section.

The objective of this exploratory study was to examine the curricular practices of teachers in Israel as a result of the mandate to include children with special educational needs. It is based on the understanding that curriculum is at the core of education. As inclusive education has become more prevalent, the curriculum perspective has gained greater interest among educators and researchers. The questions we sought answers to were:(1) what are the curricular practices teachers employ in inclusive settings?;(2) what are the curricular practices teachers employ in non-inclusive settings?; and (3) what are the changes that have occurred in teachers' curricular practices? Data were collected by pre-service special education teachers as part of the requirements in an undergraduate course. Twenty-nine teachers, representing a variety of educational settings, ranging from inclusive classes in a mainstream school to special schools, were interviewed. In addition, observations were carried out in their classes. Content analysis of the different texts revealed the following themes: (1) the nature of the curriculum; (2) possible connections between the individual educational plan and the general curriculum; (3) employing curricular adaptations. Discussing the changes in the past decade resulted in a typology of the implementation of inclusion in Israel.

Inclusion of students with disabilities into regular classrooms has been practised on a voluntary basis in Israel for the past 30–40 years. Special education legislation passed in 1988 included as one of its touchstones the mandate to mainstream students with disabilities into regular classrooms to the maximum extent possible. The ‘Plan for Inclusion’ began in 1996 and since 2000 it has been implemented in schools all over Israel.