Teacher education in Europe currently operates within a paradoxical landscape: it faces unprecedented political scrutiny while simultaneously being positioned as the primary mechanism for addressing complex societal challenges including digital transformation, sustainability, and educational equity. This tension has generated a critical need for new governance models that can bridge the gap between research, practice, and policy.

This paper explores the shifting landscape of European teacher education through the lens of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies (ETAs) within the context of the European Education Area (EEA) and the broader challenges of researching and enhancing teacher education practices and experiences. While European governments all too frequently question the quality of teacher education, there is nonetheless a growing consensus among policy makers that teacher quality is the cornerstone of improved educational outcomes and pupil achievement (OECD 2025; Binder 2024) . This paper proposes to examines how the ETAs represent a novel "knowing and acting" framework – moving policy-work for teacher education beyond traditional research to create innovative policy actions and bespoke communities of learning within a bounded space cultivated by the European Commission.

Drawing from research and conceptual analysis that started early in the life of the intervention much of which has been completed by contributors to this paper (see Galvin et al., 2024) and from a significant publication on the implication of academies for teacher education governance (Sorensen & Graf 2024), we examine how these academies foster experimentalist governance (Sabel & Zeitlin, 2010)by including bottom-up, teacher-centred research into EU policy-making. Additionally, we consider the implications of the largely positive and celebratory Assessment of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies Initiative Report (PPMI 2025)which focuses on the first and second cycle Academies. This was recently completed by the European Commission and presented in preliminary form at a Policy event in June 2025.  

This paper discusses the European Teacher Academies (ETAs) initiative as a potentially transformative policy-led framework that is actively reshaping standards and approaches in teacher education across Europe. As an ongoing initiative with significant implications for future practice, the ETAs represent a timely and important case for understanding how European educational policy is evolving to address the contradictions inherent in contemporary teacher education. Additionally, we discuss the Commission's position that reframing teacher education practices and strengthening national-level policy alignment are essential for the long-term sustainability of research-informed transformation; an often-unspoken but defining aspect of the Academies action.

We open with a focused analysis examining determining features of the Teacher Academies Initiative – its goals, approaches, and intended outcomes as a Commission policy activity. This analysis presents a clear understanding of the complexities involved in researching the initiative, particularly the challenges of studying key aspects of teacher education and its changing modalities against a background of surprising Commission disinterest. Our analysis draws on considerable insight assembled over three years as both participants in and critical observers of academies and their practices. Nest, we pursue three interconnected lines of inquiry, each offering distinct analytical value: First, we consider the policy influence paradox. When academies emphasize policy advocacy, establishing whether they actually influence educational policy at national and European levels becomes analytically challenging. As Andrews (2022, p1) observes, defining success, and working toward it, remains inherently difficult. Our discussion illuminates the gap between policy production and demonstrable influence in the Academies context. Second, we discuss the multilingualism and cultural diversity challenge. Examining Academy expectations related to multilingualism and cultural diversity exposes a baseline awareness problem. In contemporary Europe, marked by rising populism and cultural tensions, gauging authentic progress becomes especially problematic yet crucial. We identify both opportunities and challenges for Academies in this domain. Third, we address the sustainability question. Our work for this paper has highlighted the importance and urgency of Academy legacy and maintaining accessible educational resources long-term. While projects possess expertise to create pedagogically sound materials, researching their lasting impact presents significant challenges. These three lines of inquiry reveal substantive questions about rigorously researching ambitious educational interventions. In the paper's second part, time permitting, we discuss implications of the Assessment of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies Initiative Report (PPMI 2025). Drawing from publicly available results, we address the problematic now facing European teacher educators as a professional community: research generation is intended as a core function of these networks. Critically, research produced within European Teacher Academies is designed to directly inform policy development at multiple governance levels – local, national, and European – creating feedback loops between practice-based inquiry and policy formation. Our overall assessment is that this unfortunately remains far from the lived reality of the Teacher Academies initiative to date.

The Erasmus+ Teacher Academies (ETAs) initiative represent a pivotal shift in how ‘knowing & acting’ are integrated within EU policy work European teacher education. By positioning teacher quality as the fundamental cornerstone of educational achievement, these academies attempt to move beyond traditional practice and paradigms to foster innovative policy action. As a novel and we suggest significant intervention supporting the EEA objectives they serve as a mechanism for experimentalist governance, aiming to bridge the persistent gap between bottom-up, teacher-educator community practice & values and top-level EU policy-making. While the Assessment of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies Initiative Report (2025) presents a limited but celebratory view of the first two cycles, a more critical examination reveals a complex policy influence paradox. The Commission’s position underscores that the long-term sustainability of these research-informed transformations depends on strengthening national-level policy alignment and reframing professional practices – an often-unspoken yet defining goal of the action. However, findings suggest a significant disconnect remains between the intended function of these networks – where practice-based inquiry is designed to inform multi-level policy development – and the current lived reality of the initiative to date. Furthermore, the potential of education research in this domain is currently hindered by challenges regarding resource sustainability, cultural diversity, and an initial lack of engagement from the wider teacher education community. For the ETAs to successfully navigate the contradictions of contemporary education, they must move beyond the mere production of policy to achieve demonstrable influence at the national level. This paper proposes that while the ETAs provide a unique "bounded space" for innovation, their success as a transformative framework requires a more rigorous integration of "knowing" and "acting" and full policy process participation by the European Teacher Education community to ensure that teacher-educator knowledge & values truly shape the future of European education policy.

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