Abstract
Teacher educators are expected to play a significant role in providing teachers of good qualities. There is, however, a great deal of uncertainty about how to educate teacher educators. The purpose of this study is to answer the following three research questions: (1) How have the teacher educators candidates (= Ph.D and master course students) been developed through experiencing GTAs (graduate teaching assistants)? (2)What are the promoting and limiting factors for their development? and (3) How do they perceive their experience? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a small scale qualitative study focusing on three teacher educator candidates for one year in 2014. According to this research, the findings can be summarized in three points: (1) the process of the development of each candidate is varied. While candidate A has been developed based on the identity as a teacher educator, candidate B focuses more on the identity as a researcher. In contrast, the identity of candidate C seems to have been confused between a teacher educator and a researcher. (2) The important factors are their identity and background. Particularly, experience as a learner and supervisors and colleagues seems to have an impact on their perceptions and practice. (3) From their perceptions, the experience of GTAs would have a good effect on developing them not only as teacher educators but also as researchers. In fact, for candidate C, who used be confused about their identity, the experience as a GTA seemed to have given a good opportunity to reflect and establish his identity.
