A Narrative Structure for Teacher Educator Team Analysis and Development

United Kingdom (UK) teacher educators in the midst of professional practice changes have been reported to find benefit in being exposed to different theories with a view to resolving conflicting demands and developing new perspectives. This paper provides a synthesis of theories that can help teacher educator teams in universities to make sense of changes in practice together. The theoretical synthesis presented includes models of stages of team development, sense-making, experiential learning and complexity science principles. It is here argued that such a deftly applied synthesis can then facilitate higher education institution (HEI) education department teams to create individual narratives with a view to then sharing them with each other to develop a group narrative. The purpose and benefits of this would immediately be sought in improving team functioning and performance in order to create a more solid foundation from which individuals might even begin to engage in career development along the fellowship trajectory assumed by the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA). A key assumption this paper rests on therefore is that team functioning is a positive asset that is pivotal to individual career development and prerequisite impacts on teaching and learning, and leadership and management of coaching and mentoring with respect to these in a department or team. The contribution this paper makes therefore is a practical approach for analysing and further developing academic teams of teacher educators in a landscape of continual professional change, with a greater theoretical toolkit to draw from to achieve this.