The Quality of Teachers
Published by: ATEE
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Summary
Teacher education plays a very significant role in increasing and safeguarding the quality of teachers. The Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) aims to improve the quality of teacher education in Europe through the international exchange of research and practice in pre-service and in-service teacher education, and through active dialogue between the different stakeholders.
When developing national or European policies on teacher quality, it is important to incorporate professional and academic perspectives on teacher professionalism and teacher development. To fuel these policies and to contribute to the clarification of the concept of teacher quality, the ATEE recently brought together an international group of over 300 teacher education professionals who are involved in the theory and/or practice of educating teachers.
At its 30th annual conference in Amsterdam, ATEE members addressed the issue of teacher quality by means of keynote presentations, paper presentations during parallel sessions, and meetings of research and development centres. The participants were invited to engage in an interactive and ongoing debate during the conference, stimulated by a discussion paper prepared by the Academic Committee of the conference.
The outcomes of the 30th ATEE conference were translated to seven recommendations on the development of, criteria for and use of indicators for teacher quality. During ATEE's 31st annual conference in Portoroz, Slovenia, the recommendations were discussed and accepted by the General Assembly.
This document presents the seven recommendations and the elaboration of the recommendations. The aim of the recommendations is to inspire teachers to reflect on their professional quality and to help them to find indicators1 for this quality and to develop this quality. We also hope that the recommendations will support policy makers who are involved in developing indicators to identify teacher quality.