Second TEPE Monograph: Advancing Quality Cultures for Teacher Education in Europe
04 October 2010 - General announcements
The Teacher Education Policy in Europe Network (TEPE) has published its second monopgraph; 'Advancing Quality Cultures for Teacher Education in Europe: Tensions and Opportunities', edited by Brian Hudson, Pavel Zgaga and Björn Åstrand. The book contains reviewed contributions that were presented at the TEPE conference of May 2009.
There are altogether 15 articles (written by 23 authors from 12 European countries) divided into three parts.
- Two articles form the first part which discuss some broader issues for Teacher Education in Europe: the impact of the Bologna Process on Teacher Education and the issue of the quality and status of teacher educators.
- The second part consists of five articles which discuss various dimensions of Teacher Education in Europe: Nordic, Central European as well as South-east European practices are analysed. In addition, Canadian (Quebec) policies and practices are also discussed.
- The third part addresses specific aspects of teacher education in Europe: teacher identity building, the teacher researcher, the construction of upper-secondary teachers’ professional roles, preparing subject matter teachers for work, liberal science teacher education, chemistry teachers views on competencies, the concept of knowledge in Teacher Education and the role of drama education in developing the personality and social competencies of teachers.
Next to these 15 papers addressing different perspective on quality cultures in teacher education, the mongraph closes with the conclusions and recommendation of the 2009 conference:
The conference called for:
- Recognition of the importance of a long term and integrated view of teacher education that includes initial teacher education, induction and continuing professional development and that also recognises the need to support teachers as life long learners throughout their careers.
- Greater recognition of the need for teacher education to be based on a balance and interconnection between a strong research-based curriculum in Higher Education and strong support in the process of identity formation of teachers in practice.
- Greater attention to be given to strengthening the professionalism of teacher educators as a task for the professional community of teacher educators in the first instance, but also supported by incentives from policy makers.
- The development of a common framework of quality indicators for Teacher Education in Europe .
- Three way communication between researchers, policy makers and TE practitioners: researchers in TE, policy makers and decision makers at the institutional, local and national level and TE practitioners at the institutional level and as mentors in schools.
- An emphasis on systemic quality enhancement at the institutional level (the Bologna Process stressed that quality is the primary concern of higher education institutions), comprehensive national action plans for implementing the agreed European principles (within the EU Education and Training 2010) as well as national action plans regarding the “social dimension” (stressed in the recent Leuven / Louvain-la-Neuve communiqué of the Bologna ministers).
- The development of joint research projects in order to advance research in and on Teacher Education and in particular to promote quality in Teacher Education.
The monograph is online available at the TEPE website.