The concept of the teaching profession has undergone significant changes in recent decades and changes will continue to take place in the future in all countries. This requires continuous updating of teachers’ skills and competences which are also constantly changing. These factors create pressure both on initial teacher education but also increasingly on teachers’ in-service education as well on the induction phase. This is why it is important in developing teacher education (TE) to take care that teachers get the skills and competences they need during their whole teaching career, throughout the continuum to be able to become life long learners (Niemi 2008). In general, teachers should be encouraged more actively to take a wider look at their own professional development. Overall, initial teacher education lays the foundation for a teacher’s work, but in-service education should support this work in all possible ways throughout the teaching career. According to Eurydice (2009), induction has been introduced in slightly less than half of all European countries and teachers’ in-service education is among the professional duties of teachers in over half of all European countries. The importance of teachers’ in-service education has been emphasised in all main European Commission’s texts concerning improving the quality of TE. In-service TE has a significant role in updating the professional expertise of teachers and principals, as well as in enhancing both personal well-being and the well-being of the work community as a whole.

The presentation concentrates on the results concerning teachers’ continuing professional development and it is based on the results of the European Commission’s research project ‘Teacher Education Curricula in the EU’ carried out in 2008 – 2009 by the Finnish Institute of Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä. The main purpose of the study was 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 European Commission Communication ‘Improving the Quality of Teacher Education’ (2007a) and the related Council Conclusions (2007b).

The data for this study consists of curricula and other documents concerning TE, of email responses, of on-line questionnaire data collected from TE experts from all Member States and of interviews made in seven case countries. The final report has been submitted to the Commission in December 2009. 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.

European Commission (2007a) The Commission Communication 'Improving the Quality of TE (Brussels, 3rd Aug. 2007) (http://ec.europa.eu/education/com392_en.pdf) European Commission (2007b) The related Council Conclusions (Brussels, 26th Oct. 2007) (http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/07/st14/st14413.en07.pdf) Eurydice (2009) Key Data on Education in Europe, http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/key_data_series/105EN.pdf Niemi, H. (2008). Research-based teacher Education for teacher’s lifelong learning. Life-long Learning in Europe 1, 61-69.