One of the remarkable traits of the ISTEPEC (Intercultural Studies in Teacher Education to Promote European Citizenship) partnership is that it brings together teacher institutions from Nothern Europe, Central Europe, Western and Southern Europe : from Sweden, England, the Netherlands, to Andalucia, and Sicilia, via Brittany, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. It provides a fairly representative sample of the 27 states of the Union and of its various cultures. The initial teacher education modules that were designed and implemented during three years of the programme enabled the students teachers to work together in plurinational, pluricultural groups and to adress the issues of citizeship education for the future citizens of Europe, who are today’s pupils in the schools of our various countries. There are clearly three threads that are closely interwined : Teacher Education, European Citizenship and Intercultural Studies. They all combine the dynamics of he programme. Teacher Education is our job and our mission. It is one of the driving elements int he shaping of the future. To take up Hannah Arendt’s ideas of the responsability of adults towards younger generations, teachers have their own responsability there. European citizenship has legal, judiciary, social, economical and culturl colourings. And about Intercultural studies, student teachers need to practise them themselves, in the course of their initial training as teachers. Our project was an European project and that is why we anchored our reflection and our initiative in the European space. It was a question of finding the synergy between the education in the citizenship, introduced into school most of the curricula of the democratic countries. It seemed to us important to insist particularly on the abstract tools, more than on the factual knowledge, as far as the teachers who are formed today go for the greater part, to teach up to the neighborhood of 2050. It would be also imaginary to think that factual knowledge acquired in 2005 would keep an incontested validity during about forty years of career. Our initiative joins in a logic of formation throughout the life, and it finds all its justification in text published in 2006 " Common European Principles for Teacher Competences and Qualifications " of the programme « Education and Training 2010 ». The ISTEPEC approach is based on three principles of teachers education, applied to our particular project : - Interactive workshops and intercultural understanding, at three levels : thought, language and action; with the necessary input of knowledge; a lot of questioning, probing and critical thinking; a lot of space for expressing opinions, reactions and emotions and for debating, negotiating and decision-making. - Reflective approach : from experience to professional knowledge, in the erea of European Citizenship Literacy. - Transferable skills : from the teacher training institute to the classroom and from one European country to another. ISTEPEC has also been a wonderful opportunity to develop over the years a common working culture, learning from one another. It has been a kind of multicultural laboratory to facilitate, in our professionnal environment. The communication will review the structure of the network, the key points and the weak points of this original device.

Theoretical and abstract tools This work joins in a perspective of understanding and comparison of the action of the European professor. To analyze this action in the process of education and learning, it is indispensable to lean on abstract instruments within the framework of the functioning of the educational systems. The analysis leans as well on a quantitative approach as a qualitative approach. A methodology of social geography will be also used.

- Geographical research on the projects of partnerships COMENIUS in Europe; - Creation of a network of research-action (exchanges and analyses of the practices) with the teachers involved in similar projects; - Elaboration of course of training for the future teachers to register in the programming of the partner institutions of initial training; - Clarification of modules for the in-service training, intended for the teachers in exercise and for the trainers of teachers; - Reorganization and reconstruction of modules according to the results of the experiments and the conception of one European lesson intended for the teachers and for the trainers; - Guarantee the link between teaching and learning