In recent years both initial and in-service teacher education (TE) as well as the situation of newly qualified teachers have received a lot of attention by the European Commission (EC) and also in the Member States. The concern of TE in Europe is raised by studies that have revealed several shortcomings in TE. For example, in an OECD survey (2005) almost all countries reported shortfalls in teaching skills and difficulties in updating these skills. Analyses have also shown that current systems for TE often fail to give teachers the skills and key competencies they would need. These findings have accordingly prompted the Commission Communication 'Improving the Quality of TE’ (Brussels, Aug. 2007) (EC 2007a) and the related Council Conclusions (Brussels, Oct. 2007) (EC 2007b). However, while the communications may raise discussion and launch policy developments so as to harmonise TE policies and politics across and beyond the EU, they are still but recommendations, albeit influential ones, since the Member States are autonomous and will make their political decisions independently. This presentation is based on the results of the research project ’Teacher Education Curricula in the EU’, financed by the EC and carried out by the Finnish Institute of Educational Research (FIER), University of Jyväskylä. The project covered all 27 EU Member States. The study is expected to provide a systematic, reliable survey of the situation regarding TE curricula across the EU countries and including all levels of general education, but excluding vocational education and training (VET). It should also relate to curricula for initial TE, including induction periods where relevant, and for in-service TE. The main purpose of the study is to assess the extent to which the initial, induction phase and in-service TE curricula of the EU countries provide teachers with the knowledge, skills and competencies referred to in the above mentioned EC Communication and the related Council Conclusions. For the project, skills and competences mentioned in the EU documents were grouped into eight clusters: subject competence, pedagogic competencies, integrating theory and practice, co-operation and collaboration, quality assurance, mobility, leadership and continuing and lifelong learning. The data for this study has been collected in 2008–2009 and consists of documents concerning TE, of email responses and of on-line questionnaire data collected from TE experts from all Member States and of interviews made in seven case countries. The final report will be submitted in autumn 2009.

The main focus of the project is on teachers’ skills and competencies as accounted for in TE in the EU Member States. The background data was collected from existing databases (e.g. EURYDICE and OECD) as well as from the network consisting of over 100 TE experts from all Member States. These persons were asked questions concerning TE curricula and teachers’ skills and competencies mentioned in them. An on-line questionnaire was administered within the network for validating the received data, The interview data consists of 32 interviews from Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Romania, Catalonia (as a part of Spain), and Scotland (as a part of UK). The interviews were carried out with a semi-structured interview method for the sake of consistency and reliability. Before submitting the final report, the descriptions concerning each Member State, if mentioned in the final report, will be sent to the contact persons for verification and validation.

As the analyses of the results are still in progress (as of spring 2009), at this point only preliminary results are available. Firstly, in some countries both primary and secondary TE takes place as MA level programmes at universities, but in many Member States there are binary systems, where the initial TE for primary school teachers is organised at college level and for upper secondary teachers at the university level. Secondly, in many countries the national documents, laws and regulations provide only very general guidelines on how TE has to be organised in TE institutions, and the institutions may design their TE curricula quite independently. Thirdly, in most cases teachers’ knowledge, skills and key competencies as mentioned in the EU documents seem to be stated in different kinds of documents, but not always in TE curricula. The final results of the project will be presented at the ECER conference.