Designing knowledge bases for teacher educators: Challenges and recommendations

The growing awareness that teacher educators need specific knowledge has raised the idea of building knowledge bases for teacher educators, but research about how to do this is scarce. In this chapter, we summarize the main discussion about knowledge bases and then analyse two examples of web-based knowledge bases. The aim of the Dutch knowledge base project, started in 2009, was to support teacher educators to underpin their practices and support their continuing professional development. This knowledge base distinguishes ten domains and four perspectives. The development of InFo-TED knowledge bases began in 2016. The plural was used to stress that InFo-TED would not claim to build the ultimo generic knowledge base. Starting point, based on InFo-TED’s conceptual model (see chapter 2) was to take the practices of teacher educators seriously. Thirteen building blocks structure the InFo-TED knowledge bases. Additional blogs offer the possibility to pose new research developments, share practices and challenge policies. We compare contexts, the building of structure and contents, the creation of ownership and the use of both knowledge bases. We conclude this chapter with an overview of challenges developers of knowledge bases face, and then formulate some recommendations for the future.