The pedagogical development (PD) for educators in higher engineering education is indispensable to the promotion of educational changes and high-quality teaching and learning necessary to train twenty-first century engineering talents. With the expansion of various PD activities in engineering education in recent decades, there is a growing need to understand the characteristics and impact of current PD activities and to develop strategies for their further development. This study reviews 116 articles to provide an overview of current PD activity designs and the challenges reported in research on engineering education. The selected papers' frameworks, duration and organizational formats, evaluation methods, teachers' learning outcomes, research methods, and reported challenges are summarized. The findings of this study call for additional research on theory-driven designs for future PD activities as well as additional empirical PD studies using multiple data sources, a variety of research methods, and various analytical tools.