Session Information
10 SES 06 A, Professional Learning for European Teacher Educators: Addressing issues of inclusion/exclusion in teacher education
Panel Discussion
Contribution
Introduction and purpose
Across Europe teacher educators are recognised as key agents in improving the quality of schooling and achieving higher levels of social justice. However, as the European Commission (2013, 2015) has identified, these educators also need professional learning opportunities to achieve these aims and to support their diverse and multi-faceted roles in fast changing multi-cultural and multi-lingual societies.
Teacher educators’ roles clearly include educating current and future generations of teachers to work in diverse communities addressing the needs of all learners. Recent European Commission reports (2013, 2015) have identified that, as our societies shift and change, some teacher educators themselves require on-going support in addressing these key issues of inclusion/exclusion in their work.
Consideration of teacher educators’ professional learning is also relevant to the inclusion/exclusion debates because this occupational group is often marginalised within the complex hierarchies of universities, colleges and schools. Teacher educators’ professional capital can be differentially valued, and their learning de-emphasised within neo-liberal regimes for teacher education. This occupational group is therefore both ‘inside and outside the ivory tower’ (Maguire, 1994: 32), both excluded and included.
This interactive session reports on the continuing work of the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (Info-TED) project, funded by the European Commission, to support the professional learning needs of these educators. Current work includes developing a website which hosts a range of multi-media resources, an interactive Virtual Learning Platform, an international Summer Academy and dissemination events. This work is underpinned by significant empirical research (Czerniawski et al, 2016) and strong conceptual frameworks for understanding professional learning (Kelchtermans et al, 2017).
This panel will bring together teacher educators from England, Ireland, Belgium, Norway, and Israel, all members of the InFo-TED council and involved in the project development work.
Structure of the session
The lead presenter will briefly describe and analyse the significant work of InFo-TED in 2017/18 and outline plans for future sustainability.
Group representatives from England, Belgium and Ireland will identify relevant national issues about inclusion/exclusion in teacher educators’ professional learning, based on their increased understanding about the conditions, determinants and difficulties in striving to achieve and instantiate the desired outcomes of the InFo-TED project. Each presentation will identify the relevant and underpinning theoretical and empirical research.
The presenters will then initiate a debate asking for input and feedback from the audience on these broad areas:
- how the project overall might best address issues of inclusion/exclusion within teacher educators’ professional learning;
- the development of the structures of the Virtual Learning Platform to support this professional learning;
- the form and content of the resources on the website as a whole to achieve similar aims;
- the deployment of these on-line, multi-media resources in face-to-face learning events;
- the identified scenarios for supporting teacher educators as an excluded/included occupational group;
- the sustainability plan and its implications for pan-European visions of teacher education
- the developing understanding/conceptualisation of teacher educator development based on the project results.
In line with the goals of the InFo-TED project, our overall aims are to work with our audience to build connections with congruent national and international activities and networks, and to ascertain how InFo-TED can best continue to facilitate the professional development of teacher educators around Europe.
References
Czerniawski, G., Guberman, A., & MacPhail, A. (2017). The professional developmental needs of higher education-based teacher educators: an international comparative needs analysis. European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(1), 127-140. Kelchtermans, G., Smith, K. & Vanderlinde, R. (2017): Towards an ‘international forum for teacher educator development’: an agenda for research and action, European Journal of Teacher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2017.1372743 Murray, J. (2015) Trends in European Teacher Education in New Aspects of European Teacher Education
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