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Although teacher educators have not been the focus of extensive research efforts, a body of knowledge about them is beginning to emerge. Troyer summarizes the research conducted during the past two decades that focuses on teacher educators and suggests areas in need of additional study. he quality of any teacher education program is at least partially dependent on the quality of its professoriatethe men and women who develop, implement, and evaluate programs of teacher education. For a variety of reasons, however, teacher educators have not been the focus of much research on teacher education. Perhaps we are fearful that common criticisms of teacher educators will be substantiated, or that additional criticism will be forthcoming as a result of new fndings. Perhaps we are hesitant to consign a complex and divergent population with whom we identify so closely to the few lines of simplistic findings that may result from some research efforts or, perhaps we perceive research on teacher educators as less salient than other lines of educational inquiry. Cruicl~shank (1984) articulated reasons for the dearth of research on teacher education in general. These reasons would seem to apply to the lack of research on teacher educators as well. The importunate state of inquiry can be attributed to a number of causes including : the culture of teacher education that, to a large extent, is based upon professional wisdom, common sense, and commitments ; lack of aptitude for or training in inquiry by teacher educators; absence of time, support, and reward for inquiry; the promotion of inquirers into unrelated positions; the near absence of vehicles that encourage and transmit scholarly knowledge ; the commonly held belief that teacher education is too complex a phenomenon to be successfully studied; and perhaps most notably the absence of paradigmatic communities of teacher education researchers. (p. 45) Whatever the reasons, research on teacher educators appears limited not only in comparison to other lines of inquiry in teacher education, but also in comparison to research on the professoriate in general. Finkelstein (1984), WII ,=.;B1: for example, identified over 300 systematic, explanatory, empirical studies of college and university faculty since 1942, in addition to hundreds of purely descriptive and demographic studies.The far more limited number of studies on teacher educators may be due in part to the relatively recent emergence of teacher preparation as a function of colleges and universities.

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