What do ATEA people research and why?

This presentation takes as its starting point two review papers of research on teacher education in Australia (Murray, Nuttall & Mitchell, 2008; Nuttall, Murray, Seddon, & Mitchell, 2006) and proceeds to analyse the collection of papers presented at the recent 2011 ATEA conference. The purpose of the analysis is, firstly, to identify broad trends that emanate from particular characteristics of the research in terms of topic, broad area, theory & research methodology, and subsequent methods of data collection. A second focus of the analysis is to tie in the findings to current policy contexts in education, looking in particular at the potential broader impact of the research conducted by ATEA, the major professional & research association of teacher educators in Australia. An attempt is made to consider possible motivations for engaging in particular types of research by drawing on the data presented in each paper. The presentation ends with a discussion of possible future directions.