Abstract:

Many teacher educators enter their job without formal preperation for becoming teacher educators. Therefore, they need to develop their own professional skills, particularly during the first years of their work as teacher educators (Murray & Male, 2005). Additionally, They are exposed to many changes and reforms in teacher education which require them to evaluate and redefine their professional competencies. Consequently, attention to the professional development of teacher educators is crucial and may contribute to enhancing teachers' quality.

Professional development can be defined in different ways. In relation to teacher educators it was defined as the process by which an individual teacher educator improves the quality of his/ her work and tries to become the best professional one can possibly be (Smith, 2003, p. 203).

Research on professional development of teacher educators is outdated, ristricted to certain professional activities, or constrained to descriptions of concrete courses for new teacher educators. An exception is an extensive study of 400 Dutch teacher educators which revealed that monitoring their own professional development is essential to their profession and is the most fundamental area to improve (Koster, Dengernik, Korthagen, & Lunenberg, 2008).
In Israel, teacher educators' professional development takes several forms: workshops and courses organized by the teacher training department as well as seminars organized by teacher training institutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher educators' motives for participating in faculty seminars and their perception of the contribution of these seminars to their instruction and their professional development. This study focused on a teacher educator seminar conducted in one teacher education college.

Data were collected from 45 teacher educators using a questionnaires administered at the end of each of the seminar meetings. Questionnaires included closed items and open-ended questions. Participants differed in terms of gender, experience, academic degree, and expertise. Interviews were conducted with 8 teacher educators to obtain in-depth data.
Findings indicate that the major two motives for participating in faculty seminars are socialization into the college and the faculty and interest in personal professional development. Faculty seminars are perceived as means that enrich knowledge, provided opportunities to interact with colleagues, but contribute little to instruction.

In conclusion teacher educators in this study valued faculty seminars as a means for professional development and institutional socialization. Meanwhile, in order increase their effectiveness seminars in terms of teacher educators' practice in the classroom, they must be carefully designed to meet the diverse needs of the participants. Taking into account teacher educators professional devewlopment needs can contribute to their knowledge-base, and affect the quality of teacher education

Keywords:

Faculty seminars, Professional development, Teacher educators.