Teacher training is becoming more European. National and European programmes and policies are set up to remove persisting barriers.
On 3 March 2022, the French Presidency of the Council of the EU dedicated a full-day conference to the European education of teachers. Education ministers and EU representatives came together to reaffirm the importance of the teaching profession. While the basic education sector and teacher training are clearly in the competence of the Member States, the EU has multiple initiatives to support teachers and teacher education. Against the background of teacher shortages in Europe, the EU has made it a strategic priority to support “highly qualified and motivated teachers” in the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training 2021-2030. Teachers are also a cornerstone of the European Education Area (EEA), which promotes the idea for international mobility of teachers to become part of all teacher education. In this regard, the Council of the EU is planning to adopt a new Council recommendation on European pathways for teachers on 5 April 2022. This proposal should strengthen the mobility of teachers and the European element in teacher training, and support the new dynamic in the Erasmus+ programme for Teacher Academies.
Many of the ideas that were discussed at the conference stem from the report “Making schools the beating heart of Europe” by MEP Ilana Cicurel (France/Renew Europe). The report makes concrete recommendations for European collaboration, among them: i. Increasing the European mobility of future teachers by creating job shadowing traineeships for students at teacher academies, ii. the creation of a training module on Europe that should become a fix element in all teacher training in the EU, and iii. the pairing up of all secondary schools with other schools in EU countries, known as “twinning”. How the above-mentioned European training module would be rolled out in teacher training academies remains to be seen. Some teacher training institutes are already testing ideas, for example, eleven French teacher-training institutes (INSPE) already have some European elements in their curricula. A 2021 report by Eurydice entitled “Teachers in Europe: Careers, Development and Well-Being” confirms the benefits of international mobility for teachers, such as improving their linguistic, cultural and didactic competences. Some EU countries are also already taking steps in this regard: A current reform of the Czech education system focuses on internationalisation in teacher training. The Czech Education Minister puts forward that teachers who completed learning mobilities become more motivated to implement change at their school, such as changes to the curricula or adopting project-based learning methods. Moreover, the project by the French Ministry for National Education to establish the so-called Euroscol label turns out to be successful as its uptake is exceeding expectations. The benefits of teachers’ learning mobility can of course also be reaped by facilitating exchanges on a national level: Switzerland launched a new national teacher exchange programme that offers internships for future teachers to teach in a school in another linguistic part of Switzerland. The programme also offers to spend a semester in another teacher-training academy or to implement cooperation projects between teacher academies in Switzerland.
Erasmus+ recently strengthened its funding for teacher training by introducing a funding line in the new programme generation called Erasmus+ Teacher Academies. This new action aims to support teacher education and training providers in establishing transnational partnerships for excellence and communities to improve training policies and practises. On 21 February 2022, the European Commission announced the first eleven partnerships that will receive grants. 182 teacher education and training institutions from 23 countries are included in these projects. Concretely, these partnerships will develop hybrid teacher training modules, webinars, transnational research projects and, of course, facilitate teacher mobility.
However, the main challenges in increasing transnational cooperation and learning mobility in teacher training persist: The lack of language skills in tuition and schools is an obstacle. So is the lack of recognition of learning outcomes across borders. Finally, a main barrier is that different countries have different amounts of practical training foreseen in teacher education, which makes the compatibility of exchanges challenging. Short-term mobilities may be a part of the solution in this regard.