Exploring teacher-educator beliefs about teacher education: a comparative study of case programmes in Finland and China

The complexity of teacher education requires research beyond tools, methods, and approaches. It necessitates studies on the underlying beliefs of actors. Compared with school teachers, teacher educators are far from extensively researched. This study aims to examine the interplay between teacher-educator beliefs about teacher education and their practice of fostering student teachers’ competencies through a proposed conceptual framework. Teacher-educator beliefs orient their educational practice. Simultaneously, teacher educators enact their beliefs in practice. Applying the proposed framework, we conducted a cross-national comparative study through interviews to compare the interactive patterns between two case programmes in Finland and China. The empirical results illuminate how, depending on the cultural context, similar teacher competencies could be prioritised to develop in practice to enact different beliefs. The results highlight the different interplay patterns between teacher-educator beliefs and practice in the case programmes. We conclude that there is no common pattern for all quality teacher education. The conceptual framework proposed in this study provides a valuable lens through which to explore the theorised relationship between teacher-educator beliefs and practice sensitive to diverse contexts. This cross-national comparative study contributes a perspective beyond the globalised Anglo-American tradition. Its insights can support teacher education development in different contexts.