Teacher educators' professionalism in practice: Positioning theory and personal interpretative framework

• The relation between teacher educators' positioning and their practices.
• Professionalism manifests itself in teacher educators' actions and behaviors.
• A close examination of teacher educators' normative beliefs is essential.

This study connects to the international call for research on teacher educator professionalism. Combining positioning theory with the personal interpretative framework, we examined the relationship between teacher educators' positioning and their teacher education practices. The interpretative analysis of qualitative data from twelve experienced Flemish teacher educators revealed three teacher educator positionings: a teacher educator of ‘pedagogues’, a teacher educator of reflective teachers, and a teacher educator of subject teachers. Each positioning constitutes a coherent pattern of normative beliefs about good teaching and teacher education, the preferred relationships with student teachers, and valuable methods and strategies to enact these beliefs.