Abstract
Building on the work of teacher educators internationally, this chapter focuses on the research of a group of teacher educators in North America who have sought to identify key tasks and learning edges of teacher educators’ professional learning. Seven projects described here reflect efforts to define a knowledge base for teacher educators and to explore its articulation. Beginning with a collaborative self-study identifying key functions of teacher educator work as design, leadership, and advocacy, these studies illustrate how educative functions relate to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in teacher preparation. Developing and analyzing a research archive provided a common heuristic guiding the development of effective, inclusive, and reflective teacher educators and underscores the complex nature of teacher education. This collaborative work suggests a model for continued teacher educator professional learning. It demonstrates how expanding the conversation to embrace the broad range of teacher educators and enabling that conversation in ways that cut across traditional lines of setting, role, or discipline is essential to advancing teacher educators’ work. This research situates the functions of design, leadership, and advocacy as core to the work of teacher educators, placing them at the center of shaping policy and practice in education.